bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
James A. Garfield and the Economy of 1881
Authors: Taylor Mark Zachary
Published: October 2023

James A. Garfield seems scarcely relevant for the nation’s economic performance. After all, he had an active administration of just four months during 1881. During this time, Congress was in session only eleven weeks, and little business of national importance presented itself. Instead, much of Garfield’s presidency was spent dealing with a barrage of office-seekers, culminating in a standoff with fellow Republican and New York machine boss Senator Roscoe Conkling, which likely contributed to Garfield’s assassination by a mentally ill patronage-seeker. After Garfield was shot, he was virtually incapacitated until he died in mid-September. Meanwhile, the economy prospered. The unprecedented economic boom, begun three years earlier under President Hayes, seemed impervious to the political drama. Yet Garfield was not an inconsequential president. During his brief tenure, he negotiated a major refinancing of Civil War–era bonds. He also reasserted presidential prerogative over the Senate in federal appointments and addressed the US Post Office’s “Star Route” fraud, thus advancing civil service reform. In the longer run, Garfield’s assassination itself was momentous. The murder of an American president at the hand of a deranged partisan office-seeker finally broke the political logjam on civil service reform. It swung the weight of American public opinion heavily in favor of major legislation and expedited the transition to a modern government. Rather than descend into a morass of inefficient corruption, lethal to economic growth and innovation, governments throughout the United States now pivoted toward the creation of more honest, educated, professional bureaucracies.
Entanglement
Authors: Manenti Riccardo , Motta Mario
Published: October 2023

This chapter describes entanglement in bipartite systems. We define entanglement for pure states introducing the concept of Schmidt decomposition, and we show that entanglement can be quantified through the von Neumann entropy. We then present dense coding and teleportation, two quantum information protocols that use entanglement as a resource. We present the notions of locality and realism and derive the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality, an extended version of Bell’s inequalities. We then focus on mixed states and we present different techniques to solve the separability problem
Quantum simulation of Hamiltonian dynamics
Authors: Manenti Riccardo , Motta Mario
Published: October 2023

This chapter presents some quantum algorithms to simulate the dynamics of a quantum system, one of the most important applications of a quantum computer. We introduce the conditions for efficient simulation of Hamiltonian dynamics. We then present some Trotterization methods, in which the time evolution operator is approximated as a product of terms, each of which can be implemented by a quantum circuit at polynomial cost. We show high-order decompositions and illustrate the use of a Trotterization method to simulate sparse Hamiltonians. We discuss the Taylor series method and the qubitization method. The latter achieves optimal cost in simulation time and target accuracy. We conclude the chapter with a proof that simulating Hamiltonian dynamics is BQP-complete
Superconducting qubits
Authors: Manenti Riccardo , Motta Mario
Published: October 2023

This chapter presents the principles of superconducting qubits. We start our discussion with a presentation of the Josephson effect. We then introduce the Cooper pair box and the transmon, the most widespread superconducting qubit. We study how to execute single-qubit gates by driving a superconducting qubit with electromagnetic pulses, and how to read out the state of a qubit by a transmission measurement. The last part of the chapter is devoted to the presentation of some two-qubit gates. Specifically, we illustrate the implementation of the iSWAP and square root of iSWAP gates and of the cross-resonance gate. The last section discusses tunable couplers
Abbatial Authorship
Authors: Pohl Benjamin
Published: October 2023

This chapter provides a conceptual investigation of abbatial authorship in the Middle Ages. It commences with a review of the scholarly état présent (1.1) before examining the relationship between authorial composition and authority (1.2), historiography as a strategic means of abbatial self-fashioning (1.3), and the significance of female abbatial authorship (1.4), a subject too often glossed over in scholarship. The conclusions are summarized at the end of the chapter (1.5). Authorial composition was a significant facet of abbatial historiographical activity, and monastic superiors were amongst the most prolific authors of historical narratives across the medieval Latin West. Abbatial authors were set apart less by what they wrote than by their ability to imbue their works with a unique sense of authority that combined institutional auctoritas with lordly potestas. Contrary to some pessimistic assessments of historiographical production in communities of medieval religious women, the evidence presented here paints a picture of medieval abbesses as regular and instrumental authors of historical narratives.
Mental Imagery
Authors: Nanay Bence
Published: October 2023

This book is about mental imagery and the important work it does in our mental life. It plays a crucial role in the vast majority of our perceptual episodes. It also helps us understand many of the most puzzling features of perception (like the way it is influenced in a top-down manner and the way different sense modalities interact). But mental imagery also plays a very important role in emotions, action execution, and even in our desires. In sum, there are very few mental phenomena that mental imagery doesn’t show up in—in some way or other. The hope is that if we understand what mental imagery is, how it works and how it is related to other mental phenomena, we can make real progress on a number of important questions about the mind. This book aims at an interdisciplinary audience. As it aims to combine philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to understand mental imagery, I have not presupposed any prior knowledge in any of these disciplines. As a result, readers with no background in any of these disciplines can also follow the arguments.
The Content of Mental Imagery
Authors: Nanay Bence
Published: October 2023

Mental imagery is a kind of representation: it is perceptual representation not directly triggered by the sensory input. But then we need to examine what kind of content this representation has. This chapter argues that mental imagery is very similar to perceptual representations, the difference between the two being in their etiology only—one is triggered directly by the sensory input, whereas the other is not. Both mental imagery and perception represents imagistically.
Perception/Mental Imagery Mixed Cases
Authors: Nanay Bence
Published: October 2023

The importance of amodal completion in everyday perception gives us reason to hold that what we pre-theoretically take to be perception is in fact a mixture of sensory stimulation-driven perception and mental imagery. The importance of such perception/mental imagery mixed cases is highlighted and it is argued that it should be taken to be the default when it comes to perceiving the world.
Synesthesia
Authors: Nanay Bence
Published: October 2023

Synesthesia has very different varieties. Some synesthetes hear a musical note and see a specific color, for example. Some others experience a specific color each time they see a specific black numeral or letter printed on white background. This chapter argues that all forms of synesthesia count as mental imagery. Further, this explains some less central cases of synesthesia, including swimming-style synesthesia and imaginatively induced synesthesia.
Pain
Authors: Nanay Bence
Published: October 2023

What we pre-theoretically take to be perception is in fact a mixture between sensory stimulation-driven perception and mental imagery. Similarly, what we pre-theoretically take to be pain is in fact a mixture between sensory stimulation-driven (that is, nociceptive) pain perception and pain imagery. This explains both some cases where pain lacks any form of nociception (that is, the activation of pain receptors), like phantom pain or the thermal grid illusion, and the crucial role expectations play in pain perception.
Mental Imagery versus Imagination
Authors: Nanay Bence
Published: October 2023

Mental imagery is very different from imagination. Imagining is something we do: a mental action. Mental imagery is a form of perceptual representation. One big question about imagination is whether it necessarily involves mental imagery and this chapter argues that it does, but mental imagery plays a very different role in different forms of imagination.
Mental Imagery in Art
Authors: Nanay Bence
Published: October 2023

Mental imagery plays an important role not only in perception, in much of our cognitive processes and our actions, but also in less obvious parts of our lives, like in our engagement with artworks. Examples are given for the importance of mental imagery in our engagement with works of visual art, music, theater, literature, and conceptual art.
Introduction
Authors: Muldoon Paul
Published: October 2023

This introduction lays the groundwork for an understanding of the healing power of symbolic acts of sovereign repentance. It argues that the common tendency to treat the ‘age of apology’ as an ethical turn in state practice is, at best, inadequate and, at worst, misguided. Since such gestures are regularly extolled, not simply for restoring the rule of law, but for healing the wounded nation, they stand in need of biopolitical, as well as ethical, investigation. With this purpose in mind, the introduction introduces the work of Schmitt, Foucault and Agamben and uses it to reveal the connection between sovereign repentance and national healing. It finishes by posing the question of whether the healing of nations deserves to be treated as an instance of affirmative biopolitics.
An Exercise of Sovereignty in the Mode of Contrition
Authors: Muldoon Paul
Published: October 2023

This chapter examines the apology to the ‘Stolen Generations’ in Australia in an attempt to identify the potential and the limits of apology as a political practice. The chapter focuses attention on the authority of the sovereign person and the way in which ‘his’ right to suspend or override the law seems to simultaneously enable and disable gestures of contrition. Against those who treat apologies as moral gestures, indicative of the subjection of sovereign power to a Christian code of ethics, the chapter treats them as biopolitical operations in which the right of the sovereign to go beyond the law is deployed as a tool of shame management. It suggests that sovereign apologies may ultimately hold more value for the perpetrating community than the victim group, even when they are sincerely offered.
A Different Catharsis?
Authors: Muldoon Paul
Published: October 2023

This chapter examines Greek tragedy as an alternative model of societal self-reflection. Like our modern institutions of exception—the public memorial, the political apology, and the truth commission—the festival of Greek tragedy was both an institutional anomaly, separated from normal political life, and an indispensable vehicle of collective mourning and reflection. And yet, unlike our modern institutions of exception, where emotional outpouring seems to override critical reflection, it preserved (or appears to have preserved) an intrinsic connection between emotional catharsis and political clarification. This chapter seeks to explain how Greek tragedy functioned as a space of mourning and reflection where citizens were brought to an understanding of political life. It then uses this model to critically reflect on the possibilities of political clarification and learning that are present but not fully realized in the institutions which are now regularly used to come to terms with the past.
General Introduction
Authors: Lenaerts Koen , Gutman Kathleen , Nowak Janek Tomasz
Published: October 2023

This chapter introduces EU procedural law, which denotes the study of the system of judicial protection in the European Union. The three main aspects of EU procedural law relate to the functioning of the judicial system at the Union level, the relationship between the Union Courts and the national courts, and the interaction between Union law and the national procedural and remedial frameworks. Union Court procedures are governed by a set of rules contained in the Treaties, the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the respective Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice and the General Court, and other procedural texts relative to each of the Union Courts. This chapter addresses certain themes and challenges regarding the system of judicial protection in the European Union. It cites the two-fold task of the Union Courts and the interlocking relationship between them and the national courts.
Cooperation between National Courts and the Court of Justice: The Reference for a Preliminary Ruling
Authors: Lenaerts Koen , Gutman Kathleen , Nowak Janek Tomasz
Published: October 2023

This chapter looks into the cooperation between national courts and the Court of Justice within the framework of the preliminary ruling procedure. It discusses the initiative for requesting a preliminary ruling, including the notion of court or tribunal of a Member State, along with the content of an order for reference, the determination of relevance, and the duty to request a preliminary ruling. It also considers requests in the context of composite administrative procedures.
Union Law and National Procedures and Remedies
Authors: Lenaerts Koen , Gutman Kathleen , Nowak Janek Tomasz
Published: October 2023

This chapter focuses on the relationship between Union law and national procedures and remedies. It discusses the various principles and provisions structuring this relationship, followed by a thematic overview of their applications relating to remedies, jurisdiction and competence, standing and interest, time-limits, costs and legal aid, fair trial guarantees, powers of national courts, evidence, and the finality of judicial and administrative decisions. It further illustrates these principles within the context of a number of specific actions: the recovery of unlawful charges, the recovery of unlawful State aid, claims based on a directive not implemented in time, damages actions against a Member State for breach of Union law, damages actions against private parties for breach of Union law, and interim relief.
The Action for Infringement of Union Law by a Member State
Authors: Lenaerts Koen , Gutman Kathleen , Nowak Janek Tomasz
Published: October 2023

This chapter examines the action for infringement of Union law by a Member State, which is a direct action brought before the Court of Justice to ensure the enforcement of Union law. It discusses the nature and purpose of such an action and its relationship with special legal procedures regarding a Member State’s failure to fulfil its obligations under Union law. It also addresses the particularities of the pre-litigation procedure and the procedure before the Court of Justice, along with the imposition of pecuniary sanctions.
Preliminary Rulings on the Validity of Union Acts
Authors: Lenaerts Koen , Gutman Kathleen , Nowak Janek Tomasz
Published: October 2023

This chapter expounds on the procedure by which the Court of Justice delivers preliminary rulings on the validity of Union law. It evaluates what acts may be subject to such preliminary rulings and what acts can be used to assess the validity of Union acts. It also considers the effects of such preliminary rulings and the relationship with the action for annulment.
Proceedings for Authorization to Serve a Garnishee Order on the Union
Authors: Lenaerts Koen , Gutman Kathleen , Nowak Janek Tomasz
Published: October 2023

This chapter elaborates on the proceedings for authorization to serve a garnishee order on the Union. Pursuant to Article 1 of the Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the European Union, a garnishee order can be served on the Union only after prior authorization of the Court of Justice. It discusses the purpose of these proceedings and the Court of Justice’s jurisdiction and assessment.
Unlimited Jurisdiction of the Union Courts in Respect of Actions Relating to Sanctions
Authors: Lenaerts Koen , Gutman Kathleen , Nowak Janek Tomasz
Published: October 2023

This chapter tackles the Union Courts’ unlimited jurisdiction with regard to sanctions. It discusses the objective of unlimited jurisdiction and the scope of review, with particular regard to fines imposed by the Commission for infringement of the competition rules. It explains that the exercise of unlimited jurisdiction is most often requested by applicants in the sense of a reduction of a fine. It notes the gravity and the duration of the infringement of Union law as the most important criteria that determine the amount of the sanction.
Psychedelic Space
Authors: Lyon Aidan
Published: October 2023

This chapter provides a novel explication of the concept of psychedelic experience, understood as a mind-revealing experience. After reviewing the history of the concept of psychedelic experience, the chapter argues that experiences can be psychedelic in varying degrees and in different ways. In particular, the chapter argues that experiences can be more or less psychedelic by varying with respect to four dimensions: (i) scope, (ii) clarity, (iii) novelty, and (iv) duration. These four dimensions form the conceptual framework of psychedelic space, and they can be used to distinguish different ways that experiences may be more or less psychedelic. Special attention is paid to the dimension of clarity, as it allows us to differentiate between experiences that accurately reveal the mind and those that do not. This, in turn, allows for a more nuanced approach to psychedelic experiences, allowing them to be simultaneously mind-revealing in some respects and mind-distorting in others.
Conclusion
Authors: Lyon Aidan
Published: October 2023

This chapter summarises and consolidates the book's main points and presents an overall philosophical outlook on the nature of psychedelic experiences and the interventions that bring them about. These include: the novel explications of psychedelic experience and mindfulness in terms of the framework of psychedelic space, the unified account of psychedelics and meditation in terms of attention, the task of empirically testing the hypothesis that psychedelics induce psychedelic experiences, the relationship between psychedelic experiences and mindfulness, and the role that psychedelic experiences can play in philosophical methodology.
Smyrna, Venice, and the Rise of Statute in Trade Regulation, 1619–1647
Authors: Pettigrew William A.
Published: October 2023

This chapter examines the Levant Company’s developing presence in Smyrna in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 1620s, 1630s, and 1640s. Working at the fringes of Ottoman state authority with the enthusiastic support of an immigrant community of brokers, the Sephardic dragomen, the Levant Company was able to deny the English state access to a resource of funding that it had an unquestioned right to. By working with local Sephardic Jewish merchants in Smyrna, the Levant Company merchants were able to expand their trade. As a regulated company, the Levant Company enjoyed a flexible structure that enabled members to pursue their own trades overseas. These members resorted to the corporate structure of the Company to protect the infrastructure of their trade and outmanoeuvre competition. They used the unsettled position of the English monarchy at home and the distance of the sultan in Istanbul to gain commercial advantage. Designed to facilitate the international aims of the English state, the Levant Company instead circumvented the political authority of both the English and the Ottoman states to advance its commercial career. By thwarting the English state’s attempts to sequester the Company’s taxes, the Levant Company worked to challenge the king’s long-held control over customs revenues. This set a precedent for shifting fiscal control of overseas trade from crown to parliament. The dragomen therefore protected the freedom of the Levant Company against the extractive instincts of the English crown and set a precedent for parliamentary intrusion into overseas trade regulation.
King Nrai of Siam and the Redefinition of English Subjecthood, 1678–1698
Authors: Pettigrew William A.
Published: October 2023

This chapter demonstrates the power of cross-cultural alliances forged overseas at a time when the potency of the East India Company at home was waning. As in Ouidah, the Siamese King Nrai adopted a policy of encouraging a foreign presence. He went much further than the authorities in Ouidah, however, by building foreigners into the state apparatus. The English East India Company was well placed to benefit from these opportunities, but entrepreneurial employees eclipsed their corporate employers by securing state positions for themselves. Following the Skinner brothers, the White brothers (George and Samuel) used the wealth they derived from these positions to secure a good hearing from the English state and the resources to fight a successful legal and public campaign to protect their gains which trumpeted the now often fused notion of commercial and constitutional freedom. They ultimately discredited the East India Company in parliament, and helped establish a new, more accessible East India Company. The support they received from Siamese state officials was critical to this outcome. A revived East India Company emerged, however, from these deliberations more powerful in Britain and Asia than ever before because it co-opted the interloping forces within it and negotiated with regulators to broaden its base of investment and constrain opposition.
Dancing to Jazz on Fascist Airwaves
Authors: Bonsaver Guido
Published: October 2023

Chapter 8 looks at the huge popularity of jazz music in Fascist Italy. Praised by the Futurists in the early post-First World War years, the syncopated rhythms of foxtrots and other jazz-related dances took Italy by storm, fast becoming the most popular type of entertainment music (musica leggera) on Fascist-controlled radio EIAR. The chapter also examines the presence of Italian American musicians among the first American jazz bands and gauges their influence in the circulation of jazz music in Italy. Attention is paid to the channels through which Italian musicians were able to come into contact with American jazz, and to the policies with which the Fascist regime attempted a progressive ‘Italianization’ of jazz music.
The Lure of Hollywood
Authors: Bonsaver Guido
Published: October 2023

Chapter 9 examines the dominance of American cinema during the interwar years. It also looks at the policies of the Fascist regime with regard to the strengthening of the Italian film industry in response to the American dominance in the sector. The chapter’s four sections address, first, the channels through which millions of Italians came to watch American films and the presence of American ‘runaway’ productions in Italy; secondly, the regime’s attitudes and policies towards American cinema (here the role played by Mussolini and his eldest son, Vittorio, are of particular importance, together with the views of the Italian tzar of Italian cinema, Luigi Freddi); thirdly, the ways in which the Italian film industry responded to both the practices and style of Hollywood cinema during the interwar years (this section is articulated in different subsections, one of them devoted to the creation of the Cinecittà studios); fourthly, the filmic representations of migration to the Americas during the interwar years.
Corporate Bonds
Authors: Ferran Eilís , Howell Elizabeth , Steffek Felix
Published: October 2023

Corporate bonds are an alternative to bank loans and offer benefits such as a diversification of sources of funds for the corporate sector, increased choice and flexibility for companies raising finance, and the internationalization of funding sources. This chapter builds on the general considerations of debt corporate finance as well as secured debt in the preceding chapters and introduces the commercial and legal aspects concerning bonds. In particular, the chapter discusses bonds and issuers’ capital structure and financing choices, terms of bonds, structure of bond issues, listing and issuance of bonds, the secondary market trading of bonds, and new developments in the corporate bond market.
Alternative Financing Options to Public Offers and Listings
Authors: Ferran Eilís , Howell Elizabeth , Steffek Felix
Published: October 2023

Alternative finance methods contribute to the range of financing choices on offer for companies today. This chapter examines two alternative options to public offers and listings: equity (or investment) crowdfunding; and initial coin offerings (ICOs), a digital form of raising capital through the issuance of cryptoassets (which, depending on its structure, can resemble an equity offering). These options can provide important early-stage financing for firms but generate their own risks. In particular, cryptoassets have been having their moment in the limelight following considerable market volatility during 2022. Topics discussed include an overview of both alternative finance methods, their benefits and risks, UK regulation and reforms, and EU developments.
Introduction
Authors: Garrison John S.
Published: October 2023

This introduction suggests how early modern writers considered memory to be an art and a practice which could be mastered in order to possess an agential relationship to recollection. Shakespeare’s Sonnets prove a particularly compelling case study for this argument. Indeed, the poems predict insights from such contemporary fields as cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience. Sonnet 129 offers an evocative flashpoint for how memory operates across the collection of poems, especially when thrown into relief by Constantine Cavafy’s poem “One Night.” Reading the sonnets reveals how remembering is a process that is both conscious and unconscious. In turn, the operations of recollection have a profound impact on the narrative that subjects construct about themselves and their lives, especially in the spheres of desire and identity.
Body, Remember
Authors: Garrison John S.
Published: October 2023

This chapter explores how memory operates as an embodied experience in the Sonnets. Drawing on insights from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis, the argument examines how Shakespeare viewed the body as a repository for memory and an access point for an archive of erotic experience. The chapter examines the vexed operations of bodily memory as a conduit for sexuality by placing contemporary poetry by C. P. Cavafy, and Michael Ondaatje in dialogue with Sonnet 135, Sonnet 69, Sonnet 141, Sonnet 138, Sonnet 116, and Sonnet 117. In doing so, the chapter surveys this array of poems to interrogate the successes and failures of the bodily ego to master memory, especially in light of Freud’s notion of “undoing.”
Network Profiles
Authors: Ahnert Ruth , Ahnert Sebastian E.
Published: October 2023

Chapter 4 introduces a method developed by the authors for mapping the unique network ‘fingerprint’ of each person in the dataset based on a combination of eight metrics. These unique fingerprints can be compared in multidimensional space to discover latent similarities between correspondents, facilitating ways of thinking about what it means for two things to be similar, which bypass human-assigned labels and taxonomies to look directly at correspondents’ function within the network. The chapter employs this method to examine the activities and personnel that constituted the information wing of the Tudor government. The results suggest that, with the professionalisation of the role of ambassador came a need for informal networks of informants, which were supplied in the form of movable types such as merchants, military figures, and travelling intellectuals. In applying the method to the practice of letter interception—another intelligence strategy of the Tudor government—the outputs of the method show its suitability for identifying structural similarities that may not be apparent from the biographies or other obvious labels we might associate with a set of individuals. The subjects of interception often had little in common apart from their correspondence being opened, read, and copied without their consent.
Women
Authors: Ahnert Ruth , Ahnert Sebastian E.
Published: October 2023

Chapter 5 examines how women manoeuvred themselves into positions of structural power with an analysis both of their epistolary language and the structural position they held within their direct social networks. An analysis of the letter descriptions between men and women shows that while women’s letters to men are more frequently associated with petition and request (seeking to receive something), men’s letters to women more often narrate how they are giving or sending. This very general power differential can be understood on an individual basis through the analysis of a particular network ‘motif’—the triad (a micro-structure of three nodes in a network), and specifically the ‘feed-forward loop’. The chapter proposes a new method to quantify the extent to which women appear in different positions within this social micro-structure, and shows how women’s positionality is a valuable heuristic device which helps reveal how women used letters to manage or signal their social standing. By directing users of the method to the level of individual interaction, the process facilitates the reconstruction of women’s stories: how they found themselves in the position of petitioner or mediator, or occupied positions of power and influence.
Information Flow
Authors: Ahnert Ruth , Ahnert Sebastian E.
Published: October 2023

Chapter 6 examines how information flowed through communication networks. Focusing on the data field containing letter descriptions, it begins by examining how changes in a word’s usage over time can be measured, and shows that extracting words with the greatest ranked change in usage is an extremely effective method for discovering items of topical interest to the Tudor government. A new method offered by the authors shows that words with the closest temporal profiles often share these patterns because they refer to the same topic. The chapter continues to show that it is possible to reconstruct and examine the network of people corresponding about a given topic, as demonstrated by two extended case studies on Henry VIII’s divorce, and a short episode within the Dutch Revolt (1578–9). While these events are temporally and topically distinct, they share an important structural feature—a fissure that divides the networks into two main communities. It is possible to automatically discover other topic networks bearing such a feature by ranking the graphs by their modularity. In these highly modular graphs we almost always capture two contrasting viewpoints on the given event: the Tudor state’s perspective, captured though its diplomatic networks, and a second foreign perspective, gleaned either through interception or (more often for the period prior to 1547) the editorial policy of the Victorian editors of the Letters and Papers, who decided to include in their catalogues descriptions of papers from foreign archives pertinent to Henrician state affairs.
Itineraries
Authors: Ahnert Ruth , Ahnert Sebastian E.
Published: October 2023

Chapter 7 examines the geographical dimension of the letters. Of the 132,474 letters under examination, 62.1% list their place of sending. By time-ordering correspondents’ outgoing correspondence it is possible to reconstruct their movements and to discover exceptional journeys—to the edge of the Tudor purview, into sites of conflict, dispute, and opposition—or where lines of wayfaring intersect. The chapter shows how statistical modelling can suggest the likelihood of two people being in the same place by chance, and therefore identify a priori unlikely intersections that are more likely to be historically significant. Amongst the most potentially ‘significant’ intersections are people brought together by wars and sieges, as well as the visitations undertaken during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. The chapter therefore shows how the strategy can direct scholars to locations that are of interest at a specific moment in time, when the authors of letters from these locations are witnessing a moment of change, or are even the agents of those changes.
Austerity, Coalition, and Public Spending Control under the Cameron-Clegg Government, 2010–2015
Authors: Hood Christopher , King Maia , McLean Iain , Piotrowska Barbara Maria
Published: October 2023

Starting with a vignette about a scheme for wider public engagement in a draconian post-election spending review (the 2010 ‘Spending Challenge’), this chapter explores how the fiscal constitution worked under the first formal coalition government in the UK since 1945, formed to enact ‘austerity’ measures to cut debt and deficit while protecting some favoured spending areas. The chapter then explores three key episodes relating to the fiscal constitution. They are: the Coalition’s adaptation of the expenditure planning process that it inherited from its Labour predecessor, to effect a major fiscal consolidation; the fate of an effort (reflecting election pledges by both Coalition parties in support of strengthening parliamentary control over spending) to modify parliamentary procedures for ex ante scrutiny of spending proposals; and the operation of a joint ‘corporate centre’ approach to control of key elements of public spending between the Treasury and an ‘Efficiency and Reform Group’ run from the Cabinet Office.
Hunting an Elephant with a Pea-Shooter
Authors: Hood Christopher , King Maia , McLean Iain , Piotrowska Barbara Maria
Published: October 2023

Starting with a vignette about a 1994 English High Court case over a controversial overseas aid project (the Pergau Dam), this chapter explores what counted as ‘capital’ spending and how the handling of capital, infrastructure or project expenditure developed over the period. First, it looks at requests by Permanent Secretaries for formal Directions from ministers over such spending. Then it explores how official guidelines for appraisal and evaluation of project proposals developed, especially in relation to ‘optimism bias’. Third, it reviews evidence from other sources about how the formal rules and principles were applied. Clearly much effort went into economic appraisal and more systematic analysis of management and delivery issues in capital and similar spending, with the development of ‘traffic lights’, multi-staged evaluations and peer reviews. But high-profile, politically favoured ‘pet projects’ do not appear to have triggered many requests for Directions even when outsiders raised major question marks.
Science
Authors: Korenjak Martin
Published: October 2023

This chapter explains the meaning of ‘science’ in early modern times and sketches the process by which a group of disciplines concerned with various aspects of the natural world coalesced into a unified field bound together by a number of common assumptions and standards. The different groups of people involved in early modern science are presented and its institutional background is discussed. The fluid boundaries between the disciplines dealing with the natural world and their intellectual context are explored, particular attention being devoted to the interaction of natural science, on the one hand, and history, philology, and theology, on the other. The chapter closes with a sketch of the various disciplines of early modern science and their evolution over time.
Presenting facts
Authors: Korenjak Martin
Published: October 2023

The five genres discussed in this chapter presented readers with fresh facts and data, which were typically presented in small, discrete units. Letters were a fundamental form in this respect. Exchanged in huge numbers by the learned, they informed correspondents about new plants, animals, diseases, astronomical observations, and so forth; they could also be printed to let the scientifically minded as a community participate in their new information. The next two genres show significant similarities with letters and often appeared in letter format. Reports were narratives of scientifically relevant personal experiences, such as travels, observations, experiments, or clinical cases. Journal papers appeared in the seventeenth century together with the first learned journals; many papers originated in letters to the journal’s editor and reported some noteworthy experience or observation. The last two genres to be discussed were books structured as paratactical sequences of discrete units. Natural histories presented series of plants, animals, or other natural entities according to a standardized scheme. Collections of tables and charts, often introduced by detailed instructions for use, were particularly important in mathematics and strongly mathematized disciplines such as astronomy.
Summarizing knowledge
Authors: Korenjak Martin
Published: October 2023

This chapter is dedicated to three kinds of works which summarized the state of established knowledge in a given discipline or subdiscipline. The first genre to be discussed is the pandect, a type of book aiming at the fullest possible coverage of a given field and featuring a multilayered structure as well as copious indexes, which was written less to be read through than to be consulted. As the great scope of such works made them expensive as well as unwieldy in many circumstances, readers often preferred their minor counterpart, the compendium, which presented the gist of a discipline or subdiscipline in condensed form and was comparatively cheap and portable. Finally, textbooks superseded the older method of teaching by commentary on classical authors from the sixteenth century. Much energy was invested in making textbooks didactically efficient by means of thorough systematization, a catechistic format, Ramist charts, tables, and illustrations.
The Christian Right, Abortion, and Trump
Authors: Nili Shmuel
Published: October 2023

This chapter targets single-issue anti-abortion voters in the United States, heavily associated with the Christian right. It argues that, contrary to familiar progressive critiques, the fact that the Christian right has overwhelmingly backed Donald Trump in recent American presidential elections—and is very likely to continue to back Trump and his associates in any future election—does not, by itself, expose the Christian right to charges of hypocrisy or internal incoherence. The real incoherence lies with the Christian right’s anti-abortion rationale for backing Trump. This rationale has been decisive in right-wing Christians’ lining up behind Trump, but it does not align with the only rationale for anti-abortion laws which remains intact once one accounts for overwhelming empirical evidence regarding the consequences of anti-abortion laws. Since there is unequivocal evidence that anti-abortion laws do not actually stop abortions from happening, but merely push abortions into the shadows, the only possible rationale for anti-abortion laws is an expressive one: The thought must be that a legal ban on abortions has intrinsic moral significance insofar as it expresses the political community’s disapproval of abortions—and thus the community’s symbolic affirmation of the “equal human dignity” of abortion’s victims. However, even if one adopts the implausible idea that (any and all) abortion is tantamount to murder, this expressive rationale cannot align with a vote for Donald Trump, given the extraordinary expressive offense that is inherent in the very elevation of Trump into the highest elected office in the land.
Succession and Prolepsis
Authors: Nicosia Marissa
Published: October 2023

Queen Elizabeth presided over the birth of the commercial theater in England, and after her death the life and times of the Tudor line were rich fodder for playwrights who were undeterred by the Bishops Act of 1599; this required all works of history to undergo an additional process of royal review. This chapter considers how prolepsis, a rhetorical figure for imagining the future, allows playwrights to theorize monarchical succession in two plays about Henry VIII. Although the Tudor and Stuart succession was well known when Rowley’s, and Shakespeare and Fletcher’s plays were first performed, these playwrights use prolepsis to feature the many heirs of Henry VIII who would ultimately sit on England’s throne. These multi-temporal moments transform what were dangerous conflicts about succession from the recent past into appealing and suspenseful plays for early seventeenth-century reading and spectating audiences.
What Is Life? The Vitalism–Mechanism Debate and the Origins of Life
Authors: Reber Arthur S. , Baluška František , Miller William B.
Published: October 2023

The definition of life remains a surprisingly contentious subject of scientific debate, and the exact sequence of events that led to the origin of life remains a confounding mystery. Many competing theories about the origin of life have been defended, and each concentrates on some specific aspect of biological activity essential to the living process. In particular, centuries of scientific and metaphysical reflection have centred on whether life should be considered a living machine, or instead contains an immaterial vitalistic spark within its structure, definitively separating it from mechanical objects. As this debate remains unresolved, uncertainty exists about the exact boundaries that separate the inanimate from the animate. Despite any ambiguities, it is apparent that life effectively equates with conscious self-referential awareness, present at all scales and endowed within all cells. Further, a compact set of biological rules govern all living processes including complementarity, recursion, reiteration (self-similarity), and reciprocation. These crucial processes underscore the consistent cellular behaviours of collaboration, cooperation, co-dependence, competition, and the willing trading of resources that permit all multicellularity and grant survival. All these living rules further conform to a narrow set of definable living principles that are the consistent guideposts of cellular life. The seamless concordance of these living principles testify that life cannot be adequately conceived as categorical structural form or precisely ordered materiality, but must be regarded as a set of intricately coordinated living processes driven by self-referential cognitive cells.
Emergence and Evolution of Cells
Authors: Reber Arthur S. , Baluška František , Miller William B.
Published: October 2023

This chapter discusses the emergence of the very first cells from ancient vesicles and proto-cells, now estimated to have occurred approximately 3.8 billion years ago. These earliest competent cells, known as prokaryotic cells, invented most of the metabolic processes present throughout all subsequent life, including critical cellular respiration and photosynthesis based on excitable and mobile electrons and protons. Crucially, the specialized membranes that uphold life support the vectorial transport of protons, electrifying biomembranes. Bioelectric membranes perform bioenergetic processes, handling redox-based signalling and cellular energy fluxes as an inherent part of cellular respiration and photosynthesis. These foundational bioelectric and redox codes, based on discriminating, excitable membranes, are essential to cellular sentience. The first eukaryotic cells emerged by a crucial endosymbiotic event among ancient prokaryotic cells that required a two 2-billion- year evolutionary space. The authors postulate that this extremely long time frame was needed to integrate prokaryotic cellular clocks and sentiences into the supra-cellular unitary cellular clock that enables the capable, sentient, intelligent eukaryotic cell.
The Structural and Bioelectrical Basis of Cells
Authors: Reber Arthur S. , Baluška František , Miller William B.
Published: October 2023

Cells are assembled from hierarchically organized macromolecules, forming very complex, crowded, integrated, and self-organized networks of cytomatrix components known as protoplasts or cytoplasm. These assembled, ordered biological macromolecules embody historical aspects of cellular organization. Inherited patterns of structural templating derive from the very first ancient cells as initial forms of templated self-assembly, thereafter continuously reiterating through cell divisions. Clusters of intracellular ordered macromolecules form nano-protoplast units supporting nano-intentionality that represents a kind of subcellular proto-mind. In the evolution of first proto-cells, semi-independent units could have acted as a coacervate stage (small liquid droplets of two immiscible liquid phases) within cellular evolution. Moveable electrons and charged molecules generate a redox code which, together with the bioelectric code, comprise the bioelectricity-based cellular senomic fields. Excitable plasma membrane-generated bioelectric fields and associated dynamic actin filaments are closely integrated via endocytic vesicle recycling, and generate systemic long-distance signals known as bioelectrical action potentials.
The Biological Information Cycle
Authors: Reber Arthur S. , Baluška František , Miller William B.
Published: October 2023

Biology is driven by self-referential cognition, by which cells become aware of the uncertainties of environmental cues. Cells evaluate ambiguous information through a cellular information cycle as a crucial tool of cellular problem-solving. Since all information is imprecise, cells must measure it. A senomic cellular information architecture supports that intricate process as an integral component of its information management system. Cells have learned that the validity (measuring value) of their available information can be improved through shared assessment. This basal impulse is the stimulating factor that leads to multicellularity. Consequently, informational ambiguity constitutes the actual driver of biological and evolutionary development through its reverberations among sentient cells. There is a growing recognition that biomolecular processes represent information flow and that information flow equates with energy mobilization through useful predictions. However, any productive flow of biological information requires channelling. The epicentre of that information management is cellular consciousness. Accordingly, cells are informational interactomes. As all cells are conscious, and all macro-organisms are cellular architectures, any theory of consciousness or mind should be based on cell theory.