bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Galaxy classification: a deep learning approach for classifying Sloan Digital Sky Survey images
Authors: Gharat Sarvesh , Dandawate Yogesh
Published: February 2022

In recent decades, large-scale sky surveys such as Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have resulted in generation of tremendous amount of data. The classification of this enormous amount of data by astronomers is time consuming. To simplify this process, in 2007 a volunteer-based citizen science project called ‘Galaxy Zoo’ was introduced, which has reduced the time for classification by a good extent. However, in this modern era of deep learning, automating this classification task is highly beneficial as it reduces the time for classification. For the last few years, many algorithms have been proposed which happen to do a phenomenal job in classifying galaxies into multiple classes. But all these algorithms tend to classify galaxies into less than six classes. However, after considering the minute information which we know about galaxies, it is necessary to classify galaxies into more than eight classes. In this study, a neural network model is proposed so as to classify SDSS data into 10 classes from an extended Hubble Tuning Fork. Great care is given to disc edge and disc face galaxies, distinguishing between a variety of substructures and minute features which are associated with each class. The proposed model consists of convolution layers to extract features making this method fully automatic. The achieved test accuracy is 84.73  per cent which happens to be promising after considering such minute details in classes. Along with convolution layers, the proposed model has three more layers responsible for classification, which makes the algorithm consume less time.
The ALMA REBELS Survey. Epoch of Reionization giants: Properties of dusty galaxies at z ≈ 7
Authors: Ferrara A , Sommovigo L , Dayal P , Pallottini A , Bouwens R J , Gonzalez V , Inami H , Smit R , Bowler R A A , Endsley R , Oesch P , Schouws S , Stark D , Stefanon M , Aravena M , da Cunha E , De Looze I , Fudamoto Y , Graziani L , Hodge J , Riechers D , Schneider R , Algera H S B , Barrufet L , Hygate A P S , Labbé I , Li C , Nanayakkara T , Topping M , van der Werf P
Published: February 2022

We analyse FIR dust continuum measurements for 14 galaxies (redshift z ≈ 7) in the ALMA Reionization Era Bright Emission Line Survey (REBELS) Large Program to derive their physical properties. Our model uses three input data, i.e. (a) the UV spectral slope, β, (b) the observed UV continuum flux at 1500 Å, F1500, (c) the observed continuum flux at $\approx 158\, \mu$m, F158, and considers Milky Way (MW) and SMC extinction curves, along with different dust geometries. We find that REBELS galaxies have 28−90.5 per cent of their star formation obscured; the total (UV+IR) star formation rates are in the range $31.5 \lt {\rm SFR}/({\rm M}_\odot \, {\rm yr}^{-1}) \lt 129.5$. The sample-averaged dust mass and temperature are $(1.3\pm 1.1)\times 10^7 \, \mathrm{M}_\odot$ and 52 ± 11 K, respectively. However, in some galaxies dust is particularly abundant (REBELS-14, $M^{\prime }_{\rm d} \approx 3.4 \times 10^7 \, \mathrm{M}_\odot$), or hot (REBELS-18, $T^{\prime }_{\rm d} \approx 67$ K). The dust distribution is compact (<0.3 kpc for 70 per cent of the galaxies). The inferred dust yield per supernova is $0.1 \le y_{\rm d}/\, \mathrm{M}_\odot \le 3.3$, with 70 per cent of the galaxies requiring $y_{\rm d} \lt 0.25 \, \mathrm{M}_\odot$. Three galaxies (REBELS-12, 14, 39) require $y_{\rm d} \gt 1 \, \mathrm{M}_\odot$, which is likely inconsistent with pure SN production, and might require dust growth via accretion of heavy elements from the interstellar medium. With the SFR predicted by the model and a MW extinction curve, REBELS galaxies detected in [C ii] nicely follow the local LCII−SFR relation, and are approximately located on the Kennicutt–Schmidt relation. The sample-averaged gas depletion time is $0.11\, y_{\rm P}^{-2}$ Gyr, where yP is the ratio of the gas-to-stellar distribution radius. For some systems, a solution simultaneously matching the observed (β, F1500, F158) values cannot be found. This occurs when the index Im = (F158/F1500)/(β − βint), where βint is the intrinsic UV slope, exceeds $I_m^{*}\approx 1120$ for an MW curve. For these objects, we argue that the FIR and UV emitting regions are not co-spatial, questioning the use of the IRX–β relation.
Stability of planetary systems within the S-star cluster: the Solar system analogues
Authors: Davari N , Capuzzo-Dolcetta R , Spurzem R
Published: February 2022

A dynamically relaxed dense cluster comprised of about 40 stars (the so-called S-stars) inhabits the central region of our Galaxy. Their stars revolve around the Sgr A* massive object. To understand the dynamical evolution of planetary systems in a particular environment like that around Sgr A*, we carry out direct N-body simulations of planetary systems embedded in the S-star cluster. In this work, we investigate the short-term stability of the planets orbiting around S-stars after their close interactions with the central massive black hole of our Galaxy. We find that planetary systems go through encounters with the supermassive black hole (SMBH) and the nearby stars. We determine the frequency and the strength of planetary systems’ encounters with the nearby stars as these encounters remarkably increase for systems assigned to S-stars closer to the SMBH. The SMBH severely destabilizes the planetary systems, though we noted that the small oscillations in the mutual eccentricity and inclination of the planetary system could be caused by the planet–planet coupling and the near-resonance effect between the two planets. We obtain estimates of the fraction of survivor planets ($\sim 51{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$), and find that planets stripped from their hosting star are generally captured on close orbits around Sgr A*. We notify while gas giants are tidally disrupted, terrestrial planets do not. We estimate that Sgr A* flares can be due to the tidal disruption events of starless giant planets.
High spatial resolution imaging of subcellular macro and trace element distribution during phagocytosis
Authors: Subirana Maria Angels , Riemschneider Sina , Hause Gerd , Dobritzsch Dirk , Schaumlöffel Dirk , Herzberg Martin
Published: February 2022

The bioavailability of trace elements in the course of evolution had an essential influence on the emergence of life itself. This is reflected in the co-evolution between eukaryotes and prokaryotes. In this study, the influence and cellular distribution of bioelements during phagocytosis at the host–pathogen interface were investigated using high-resolution nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) and quantitative inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. In the eukaryotic murine macrophages (RAW 264.7 cell line), the cellular Fe/Zn ratio was found to be balanced, whereas the dominance of iron in the prokaryotic cells of the pathogen Salmonella enterica Serovar Enteritidis was ∼90% compared to zinc. This confirms the evolutionary increased zinc requirement of the eukaryotic animal cell. Using NanoSIMS, the Cs+ primary ion source allowed high spatial resolution mapping of cell morphology down to the subcellular level. At a comparable resolution, several low-abundant trace elements could be mapped during phagocytosis with a RF plasma O– primary ion source. An enrichment of copper and nickel could be detected in the prokaryotic cells. Surprisingly, an accumulation of cobalt in the area of the nuclear envelope was observed, indicating an interesting but still unknown distribution of this trace element in murine macrophages.
Is E-cigarette Use Associated With Persistence or Discontinuation of Combustible Cigarettes? A 24-Month Longitudinal Investigation in Young Adult Binge Drinkers
Authors: Martinez-Loredo Victor , González-Roz Alba , Dawkins Lynne , Singh Desmond , Murphy James G , MacKillop James
Published: February 2022

Introduction

It remains unclear whether electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use promotes persistent combustible tobacco use or smoking discontinuation over time. Alcohol use is associated with a greater risk of adverse health effects of tobacco, and higher likelihood of e-cigarette use, making drinkers a high-priority subpopulation.

Aims and Methods

This study examined longitudinal patterns of combustible tobacco and e-cigarette use over 24 months in young adult binge drinkers. A pooled dataset of 1002 (58.5% female; M age = 22.14) binge drinkers from the United States (60%) and Canada (40%) was used. The primary outcomes were past month combustible tobacco and e-cigarette use. Nicotine dependence was measured using the Fagerström Test of Cigarette Dependence. Alcohol severity was measured using the Young Adult Alcohol Consequences Questionnaire. Latent transition analysis (LTA) was used to identify patterns of cigarette smoking and e-cigarette use over 24 months.

Results

The LTA yielded a four-class solution: (1) e-cigarettes-only users (prevalence over time: 7.75%–10.10%), (2) dual-product users (2.61%–9.89%), (3) combustible-only smokers (8.12%–20.70%), and (4) nonusers (61.66%–80.06%). Dual-product users predominantly transitioned to complete abstinence or exclusively e-cigarette use. In combustible-only smokers, the most common transition was to abstinence, followed by persistence of combustible-only status. At 24 months, 63% of e-cigarettes-only users transitioned to abstinence, with 37% continuing e-cigarettes-only use and 0% transitioning to dual or combustible cigarette use.

Conclusions

Dual-product use in young adult binge drinkers was associated with discontinuation of combustible tobacco over time, and e-cigarette-only use was not associated with subsequent combustible tobacco use.

Implications

These findings suggest that concurrent or exclusive e-cigarette use is not a risk factor for the persistence or development of combustible tobacco use in this subpopulation, with dual-product use reflecting a transitional pattern away from combustible use, toward discontinuation.
Walk with Me
Authors: Larson Kate Clifford
Published: February 2022

Few figures embody the physical courage, unstinting sacrifice, and inspired heroism behind the Civil Rights movement more than Fannie Lou Hamer. For millions, hers was the voice that made "This Little Light of Mine" an anthem. Her impassioned rhetoric electrified audiences. At the Democratic Convention in 1964, Hamer's televised speech took not just Democrats but the entire nation to task for abetting racial injustice, searing the conscience of everyone who heard it. Born in the Mississippi Delta in 1917, Hamer was the twentieth child of Black sharecroppers and raised in a world in which racism, poverty, and injustice permeated the cotton fields. As the Civil Rights Movement began to emerge during the 1950s, she was struggling to make a living with her husband on lands that her forebears had cleared, ploughed, and harvested for generations. When a white doctor sterilized her without her permission in 1961, Hamer took her destiny into her own hands. This text offers the first account of Hamer's life, capturing and illuminating what made Hamer the galvanic force that she became when she walked onto stages across the country during the 1960s and until her death in 1977.
Looking Back, Moving Forward
Authors: Salomone Rosemary
Published: February 2022

This chapter ties together the book’s themes and arguments with a view toward a shared vision for the future. It concludes that as English weaves its power through the global politics of language, it is creating winners and losers in both expected and unexpected ways. Deciding who falls on either side of that divide demands weighing the gains and losses within and across countries with social class being a constant factor. It suggests that language as an expression of self-realization and a source of material profit can exist side by side. The social, developmental, and economic benefits are not mutually exclusive but rather mutually supportive. In the end, it calls on policymakers at all levels to realize the opportunities and mitigate the damages of a common language, English for now, in all its complexities, while preserving national, regional, and local languages and identities.
Paul Tillich
Authors: Cassedy Steven
Published: February 2022

This chapter explores the theology of Paul Tillich (1886–1965), the German Protestant theologian who immigrated to the United States in 1933, at the age of forty-seven, and established himself as a bestselling writer in a language he learned from scratch in his new homeland. Tillich was famous for rejecting the notion of a “theistic” God, that is, God as an externally existing something, and speaking of God instead as “the ground of being.” He adopted a special vocabulary to replace other conventional theological concepts with words and phrases that he invented or that he borrowed from what he described as an existentialist viewpoint. A ubiquitous word in his English writings is meaning. In his pre-emigration days, Tillich had used the German Sinn to such an excessive degree—sometimes literally dozens of times per page—and with such a want of precision that it fairly became incomprehensible. In English, meaning for Tillich came to carry a large range of different senses and to appear in a range of phrases, including at least two—“ultimate meaning” and the almost absurd “meaning which gives meaning to all meanings”—that appear to be replacement expressions for God. The ambiguity and polyvalence of meaning no doubt helped enhance the word’s appeal among readers of Tillich’s English-language works, since it allowed them to supply their own notions of the meaning of meaning.
Conclusion
Authors: Cassedy Steven
Published: February 2022

The conclusion, briefly retracing the historical arguments of the book, reasserts the point that, thanks to its ambiguity and polyvalence, meaning in many instances not only functions but actually flourishes in the absence of a conventional, precise definition. The end of the chapter makes the point that we should not forget the primitive meaning—signification—and the peculiar verbal status of the English word, which can easily suggest that there is something waiting to be uncovered, that there is something doing the signifying, and that we can exercise our interpretive faculties in an effort to uncover that something.
Conquering the Ocean
Authors: Hingley Richard
Published: February 2022

Why did Julius Caesar come to Britain? His own account suggests that he invaded to quell a resistance of Gallic sympathizers in the region of modern-day Kent—but there must have been personal and divine aspirations behind the expeditions in 55 and 54 bce. To the ancients, the Ocean was a body of water that circumscribed the known world, separating places like Britain from terra cognita, and no one, not even Alexander the Great, had crossed it. While Caesar came and saw, he did not conquer. In the words of the historian Tacitus, ‘he revealed, rather than bequeathed, Britain to Rome’. For the next 500 years, Caesar’s revelation was Rome’s remotest imperial bequest. This book provides a new narrative of the Roman conquest of Britain, from the two campaigns of Caesar up until the construction of Hadrian’s Wall across the Tyne-Solway isthmus during the 120s ce. Much of the ancient literary record portrays this period as a long march of Roman progress, but recent archaeological discoveries reveal that a strong resistance existed in Britain, Boudica’s short-lived revolt being the most celebrated of them, and that Roman success was by no means inevitable. The book here draws upon an impressive array of new information from archaeological research and recent scholarship on the classical texts to provide a balanced picture of the military activities and strategies that led to the conquest and subjugation of Britain. This book is the fullest picture to date of a chapter in Roman military history that continues to captivate the public.
The Northern Frontier
Authors: Hingley Richard
Published: February 2022

Within a year of the arrival of a new governor in Britain after the departure of Agricola, it became clear that considerable additional campaigning, and extra troops, would be required to conquer and subdue the mountains of the Scottish Highlands. At the same time a significant conflict developed with the kingdom of Dacia on the River Danube, requiring Domitian to withdraw troops from Britain. Rome withdrew from northern Scotland in around 86–87. By the late 90s, a northern frontier line of Roman territory was established on the Stanegate (on the Tyne-Solway isthmus). The ambition to conquer the lands to the north had been abandoned. Movement across the line of the Stanegate was controlled by garrisons at a number of forts. The best known—as a result of over forty years of excavation—is Vindolanda. The remarkable results from this excavation cast significant light on the management of the frontier and on the relationship between the Roman troops and local peoples, which may often have been friendly. Letters found at Vindolanda also provide information about the military units based at the fort in the late first and early second centuries, the Tungri and the Batavi from the Lower Rhine Valley. A period of relative stability on the northern frontier of Roman Britain coincided with the emperor Trajan’s aggressive campaigns in Dacia and on the eastern margins of the empire.
The Later History of the Roman Northern Frontier
Authors: Hingley Richard
Published: February 2022

Hadrian was succeeded by Antoninus Pius, who decided to focus the attention of Rome on conquering additional territory in northern Britain. He instructed the governor of Britain, Lollius Urbicus, to campaign to the north of Hadrian’s Wall; this resulted in the construction of a second monumental frontier, the Antonine Wall, in southern Scotland. The campaign to incorporate this additional territory stretched the troops so thinly across the western and northern areas of the province that the Antonine Wall was abandoned after twenty years, as garrisons reestablished Hadrian’s Wall as the northern frontier. A period of peace on Hadrian’s Wall in the late second century resulted in the establishment of towns and civil settlements at the forts along the wall, and a number of tombstones provide information about the multicultural populations living in this frontier territory. The emperors Septimius Severus and Constantius I travelled to Britain to campaign north of the wall during the third century, showing that victory in Britain remained an imperial priority. The frontier continued to be maintained during the fourth century but ceased to operate as Rome lost control of Britain during the early fifth century.
The Haunting of Christ
Authors: Ward Graham
Published: February 2022

This is the first of five chapters outlining the Christology developed throughout the project and introduces some the key leitmotifs of the examination. It opens with an account of Christ as ‘haunting’ creation. The theology is based within the account in Mark’s Gospel of Christ walking on the water of the Sea of Tiberius, contextualized in terms of an understanding of ghosts in the Graeco-Roman world. The Christological emphasis lies in encounter and response, with Christ initiating an experience of estrangement, of being ‘unhoused’. What is significant is how this haunting deepens the meaning of who Christ is and opens the question of salvation. The haunting of Christ is then examined through a famous British TV drama, The Stone Tape. This introduces the concept of the interchange of acknowledgements governing encounter with Christ and introduces rhythm as a category for exploring Mark’s Gospel.
Christ as Paradox
Authors: Ward Graham
Published: February 2022

The relationship of Christ and the Church and the nature of mediation between them issues in paradox; in particular the paradox of the incarnation. The nature of paradox is central to the interval that always stalls the play of natural and divine rhythms. This chapter explores the character of paradox. It acts as both an examination of Christ’s use of paradox and himself as paradoxical, and as a bridge to the next section of the book that treats the doctrine of creation. It focuses on the complexity of our understanding of nature (and so the difficulties with any natural theology) and the way the incarnation manifests this. It explores the fundamental Christian teaching about the incarnation—the hypostatic union—by analysing the Chalcedon symbolum that gives the teaching its conciliar expression.
The Same Self-Narrative
Authors: Merricks Trenton
Published: February 2022

Consider: The Why Question: What way of being related to a (conscious) person at a future time explains why that person will have (at that time) what matters in survival for you? Some have answered the Why Question in terms of narrative. Narrative-based answers to the Why Question can be in terms of psychological connectedness, or in terms of psychological continuity (which is a chain of overlapping instances of psychological connectedness). Chapter 6 considers an answer in terms of narrative-based psychological continuity. But this chapter focuses on an answer in terms of narrative-based psychological connectedness. In particular, this chapter focuses on—and raises objections to—an answer in terms of being alike with regard to ‘self-narrative’. As we shall see, this chapter thereby continues the discussion of the Selfer view that began in Chapter 4.
Captain Marryat Repeats Himself
Authors: Kerr Matthew P. M.
Published: February 2022

This chapter explores the under-studied popular marine fiction of Captain Frederick Marryat. Marryat’s sea-novels are shy of the element upon which they are set; he rarely focuses on the craft of sailing and describes the sea itself even less often. If, however, Marryat’s novels are not about the sea, sea-life defines their central characteristic: a multi-faceted repetitiveness. These texts repeat marine tropes that are already themselves repetitious, such as seasickness, heroic resurrection, and the revenant ghost ship. Tightly repetitive adherence to generic formulae is often deemed evidence of contrived or artificial writing. In the context of writing about the sea, though, repetition invites a competing reading: it is perhaps evidence of authenticity, of Marryat’s struggle to find a register appropriate to the ocean.
Blue Books in Hard Times
Authors: Berman Carolyn Vellenga
Published: February 2022

This chapter argues that Hard Times (1854), the Dickens novel that is most openly critical of government publications, is paradoxically the one that most resembles them. Whereas Oliver Twist turns blue book themes into a riveting fairy tale, Hard Times pairs a thematic insistence on fairy tales with a mimicry of blue book forms. The chapter reads Hard Times as a commentary on reports concerning working-class education, including a controversial 1847 report on education in Wales. It links Dickens’s “Report of the First meeting of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything” (1837) to his depiction of the dangers of statistics and testimony in Hard Times. Looking anew at Dickens’s attack on the blue books in Hard Times illuminates a crucial scene in the history of public knowledge as well as the history of the novel.
The Battle of Hong Kong, 1941
Authors: Chi Man Kwong
Published: February 2022

The chapter describes the experience of the Hong Kong servicemen during the battle of Hong Kong in detail, highlighting the diversity of such experience among the servicemen from different branches. For many of the Hong Kong service, especially those who only received partial training, the battle was a harrowing and confusing experience. Some had traumatising escapes, and their stories were not known until now, as narratives about the battle usually focus on the experience of the British personnel. The chapter also offers a statistical study of the Hongkongers’ participation of the battle.
Conclusions
Authors: Chi Man Kwong
Published: February 2022

The last chapter concludes the book, summarises its content, and offers an overview of the role played by Hong Kong servicemen throughout colonial history, their historical experience, and the relationship between them and the colonial authorities and the British military. It suggests that the experience of the Hong Kong servicemen reveals that collaboration and cooperation existed between the British and the locals at different levels, and that the agency of the Hongkongers should not be overlooked. Hongkongers from a variety of ethnic, social, and cultural backgrounds served in the British armed forces for various reasons, from seeking a secure career to earn respectability in the society. Tension existed among the Hong Kong servicemen as they were such a diverse group, but they operated effectively and were generally reliable throughout their service. This fact speaks volumes about the efficiency of the British military system and its ability to manage troops from very different backgrounds. The chapter also deals briefly with the relevance of the wartime history and the experience of the Hong Kong servicemen in post-1997 Hong Kong.
Keeping Out of Court I
Authors: Bricker Andrew Benjamin
Published: February 2022

This chapter documents two parallel tracks in literature and the law in the 1670s: the growth of verbal and especially ironic evasion in satire; and the courts’ development of procedures for delimiting verbal ambiguity. Particular attention is paid to the refurbishment of the doctrine of ‘common intendment’, which held that jurors should understand dubious language using a supposedly objective or ‘reasonable’ standard. This doctrine proved important because it laid the groundwork for jury directions issued throughout the next century. This chapter also tracks a significant rhetorical break between the openly defamatory manuscript satires of the seventeenth century and the verbally evasive printed satires of the early eighteenth century. Extensive verbal evasion, a rhetorical trend that starts in its most sustained form with John Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe, slowly becomes a prominent feature of later seventeenth- and especially eighteenth-century satire.
Epilogue
Authors: Bricker Andrew Benjamin
Published: February 2022

Though historians have largely ceased to tell Whiggish stories about the unmitigated growth of press freedom during the eighteenth century, scholars and journalists continue to point to this period as a watershed moment for liberty of speech and the press. This epilogue not only surveys some of the ways in which press freedom has been discussed and debated, but also describes the convoluted twists and turns of eighteenth-century press regulation. In particular, it documents the expansion and sometimes sudden contraction of press freedoms across the century and the belief—stunningly common among both the authorities and writers and satirists, even those who had been successfully prosecuted for libel—that the press should be thoroughly regulated. This discussion also illustrates some critical differences between press freedom in Great Britain and the United States, both then and today; and provides an opportunity to reassess such debates during the Enlightenment and within the context of ‘bibliophilic optimism’.
Gossip and the value of social knowledge
Authors: Roth Carla
Published: February 2022

This chapter argues that although gossip was condemned in theory as an inherently disruptive and primarily female form of communication, in practice it provided essential and highly valued information for anyone who sought to navigate St Gall’s social world. The chapter explores how male and female gossipers of all social levels—from St Gall’s Protestant reformers to Rütiner’s most frequent female informant, the elderly midwife Anna Bösch—used gossip to present themselves as bearers of privileged social knowledge and to raise ‘communicative capital’. The chapter then turns to gossip about crime to show that where such talk survives, it can also shed new light on well-known early modern sources.
Introduction
Authors: Hobson Suzanne
Published: February 2022

The introduction summarizes the background to the formation of the National Secular Society and the Rationalist Press Association in the nineteenth century and looks in more detail at their interests in publishing and the dissemination of serious literature in the twentieth. It explains the bottom-up methodology of the book which uses the journals associated with these organizations, The Freethinker and Literary Guide and Rationalist Review, to identify a list of writers whose work was seen as particular interest to an unbelieving readership. The introduction also asks why modernism is often seen as the ideal literature for a secular age in spite of the fact that its chief representatives rarely appear in these journals and, when they do, are often seen as peddling a form of literary irrationalism. It suggests that modernism’s alignment with the secular depends on a contingent interpretation of both as an age and a literature that discourages overt expressions of belief and unbelief. Modernism is not, then, the best place to look for unbelief in interwar literature because, paradoxically, its secular frame excludes the avowedly secularist and does so more thoroughly than the religious or the spiritual which can always be accommodated in sublimated form. The introduction sets the parameters for the rest of the book which includes well-known writers alongside those neglected as writers of mass-market or genre fiction. Some of them would not look out of place in an expanded modernist canon, but some, it suggests, were anti-modernist by design.
Conclusion
Authors: Hobson Suzanne
Published: February 2022

The conclusion describes the development of secularist publishing since the Second World War, noting significant points of intersection with debates over literature and free speech. It looks at the afterlife of the modernist secular-sacred compromise and shows how for some post-war writers and intellectuals faith found renewed purpose in fiction while unbelief did not. The conclusion revisits some of the rich fictional experiments seen in previous chapters to challenge the modernist idea still active in these contexts—that unbelief is necessarily monologic, unironic, and thereby fundamentally unliterary.
Blackfriars in Early Modern London
Authors: Highley Christopher
Published: February 2022

Blackfriars: Playhouse, Church, and Neighborhood in Early Modern London is a cultural history of an urban enclave best known in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for its playhouses and its godly preachers. As the former site of one of London’s great religious houses, the post-Reformation Blackfriars was a Liberty free from mayoral control. The legal exemptions and privileges it conferred on its residents helped attract an unusual mix of groups and activities. Zealous preachers and puritan parishioners mingled with playhouse workers and playgoers, as well as a sizable community of immigrant “strangers.” The book focuses on local playhouse-church relations and asks how a theatrical culture was able to flourish in a parish dominated the preachers Stephen Egerton and William Gouge. Physically, the church of St. Anne’s and the playhouse were virtually next-door, but ideologically they seemed poles apart. Yet despite the occasional efforts of some residents to close the playhouse, godly religion and commercial playing managed to coexist. In explanation, the book examines the conflicting economic and ideological priorities of residents and the overriding desire to promote order and neighborliness. More provocatively, I argue that the Blackfriars pulpit and stage could be mutually reinforcing sites of performance. Preachers as well as playwrights exploited the Liberty’s vexed relations with authority to air satirical and subversive views of the established church and state. By examining Blackfriars sermons and plays side by side, the book reveals a synergy between two institutions usually considered implacable enemies.
Precinct
Authors: Highley Christopher
Published: February 2022

This chapter maps the Blackfriars, surveys its major streets and buildings, and introduces its principal residents. Henry VIII granted much of the dissolved friary to Sir Thomas Cawarden who built his own great house on the site of the friars’ church. He sold or leased other parts to fellow aristocrats as well as to humbler artisans who put the old cloisters to various domestic and work-related uses. Contrary to received opinion, the early modern Blackfriars was not an exclusively aristocratic enclave, but home to a diverse mixture of social groups, occupations, and activities. All these were closely interconnected in a physical environment of often jarring juxtapositions.
Beginnings
Authors: Highley Christopher
Published: February 2022

This chapter argues that the Blackfriars early association with the Revels Office and Royal Wardrobe established a local tradition of play and performance-related activities. The first commercial playhouse that opened in 1576 was a multi-purpose space in part of the old friary where royal choirmaster Richard Farrant lodged, educated, and “staged” his boys for paying customers. This short-lived playhouse is best understood not as an isolated venture but as part of a cluster of popular recreational venues, including bowling alleys, tennis courts, and fencing schools. Collectively, they made the Blackfriars into London’s premiere entertainment area north of the river.
“Glauncing or girding at the present government”
Authors: Highley Christopher
Published: February 2022

This chapter explores the synergies between two venues that in their physical form and the experiences they cultivated were surprisingly alike. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, plays and sermons in Blackfriars might share the same ideological ground in the way they questioned the authorities of church and state. While Egerton’s sermons denounced an imperfectly reformed church and the mistreatment of allies like the Earl of Essex, Blackfriars playwrights also exposed political iniquities and derided an unpopular Scottish King in plays like Eastward Ho and The Ile of Guls. Egerton was punished for his transgressions and the boy actors evicted from the playhouse, but together their dissident activities helped solidify the Blackfriars’ standing as an oppositional space in London’s cultural geography.
“Sober, Scurvy, (and) Precise Neighbours”
Authors: Highley Christopher
Published: February 2022

This chapter returns to Jonson and his attachment to the Blackfriars stage and neighborhood, as both playwright and as parishioner of St. Anne’s. Jonson lived with patrons in the parish and so developed an intimate knowledge of local religious politics and personalities. The chapter focuses on The Alchemist, a play both performed and set in the precinct. In this most localized of plays, Jonson vents his grievances about what he sees as his interfering godly neighbors. At the same time Jonson celebrates Blackfriars’ standing as a liberty at the very moment its privileges were threatened with extinction by James I’s Second Charter of Incorporation.
The Roots of Normativity
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: February 2022

This book concerns one of the most basic philosophical questions: the explanation of normativity in its many guises. It lays out succinctly the view of normativity that Raz has sought to develop over many decades and determines its contours through some of its applications. In a nutshell, it is the view that understanding normativity is understanding the roles and structures of normative reasons which, when they are reasons for actions, are based on values. The book aims also to clarify the ways in which normative reasons are made for rational beings like us. It brings the account of normativity to bear on many aspects of the lives of rational beings, most abstractly, their agency, more concretely their ability to form and maintain relationships, and live their lives as social beings with a sense of their identity.
Intention and Value
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: February 2022

In previous writings, Joseph Raz joined those who take the view that action with an intention is an action for (what the agent takes to be) a reason, where whatever value there is in the action is a reason for it. This chapter sketches the role of reasons and intentions in leading to action with an intention. Section 1 explains that though belief in the value of the intended action is not an essential constituent of intentions, nevertheless when humans act with an intention they act in the belief that there is value in the action. Section 2 explains the relative role of value and intention in ‘producing’ the action, and relates their role to that of motivation.
Value and the Weight of Practical Reasons
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: February 2022

Assuming that the value of options constitutes the proximate reason for pursuing them, some considerations encourage doubts whether we have reason to promote or to maximize value. A proper argument would require establishing a negative. Raising doubts is less demanding: it consists in explaining some aspects of the relation between values and reasons that enable us to dispense with the doubtful thesis, by illustrating alternative relations between values and reasons. Theses such as that value should be promoted show how to determine the strength of reasons. Abandoning the thesis reopens the question of how to do this. The doubt about promotion of value is not merely terminological. Even though the value of things and of activities is a reason to engage with them there are cases in which there is not always a reason to choose the best. The conclusion touches on the limits of the argument, and its importance.
The Guise of the Bad
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: February 2022

The chapter considers the possibility of acting in the belief that the action is bad and for the reason that it is, as the agent believes, bad. Besides, can agents, without having any relevant false beliefs, perform actions motivated by their badness? The worry is the compatibility of action for the sake of the bad with the thesis of the Guise of the Good (intended actions are undertaken because agents see them as good in some respects). How can reason explanations and the more widely understood normative explanations explain actions, in light of the conditions for the rationality of actions and the bearing of masking beliefs on the explanation of their actions? Various conceptual mistakes are possible. Given the variety of human motivations, the chapter focuses on the interpretation of one case: the Luciferian motive, understood, roughly, as the drive to defy the limits of thought or of rational thought.
Normative Powers
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: February 2022

The chapter provides an analysis of normative powers as the ability to change a normative condition, and distinguishes and analyses several kinds of such powers. It distinguishes between wide normative powers possessed by any act that non-causally results in a normative change, and narrow normative powers, which are the main topic of the chapter. The most important theses of the chapter are: First, the distinction between basic normative powers and chained normative powers (the latter being powers created by the exercise of other powers) and second, defending the apparently surprising claim that people have narrow powers when and because there is undefeated value in their existence. The account explores the relations between the normative powers and the values which explain and justify their existence. It ends by showing the connection between the thesis that values depend on human nature and culture, and the dependence of normative powers on justifying reasons.
The Role of Well-Being
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: February 2022

‘Well-being’ signifies the good life, the life which is good for the person whose life it is. I defend and slightly modify my view of well-being, as a wholehearted and successful pursuit of valuable relationships and goals, The chapter considers the role of well-being in practical thought: in particular, a suggestion that when we care about people, and when we ought to care about people, what we do, or ought to, care about is their well-being, regardless of who cares and who is cared for. People may care, perhaps ought to care, about themselves, and about people with whom they have, or ought to have special bonds, and about other people generally. The chapter argues that the suggestion is misleading: the role of well-being in both personal and ethical life is much more nuanced and more modest.
Attachments and Associated Reasons
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: February 2022

The chapter unfolds in five sections dealing with five questions: first, does the partiality of attachments present an obstacle to their being or giving practical reasons? Second, given a value-based approach to practical reasons, can universal values generate reasons that are specific to their subjects, reasons—say—towards my friends that only I have? Third, do attachments affect what we do independently of any reasons that they provide? Fourth, in what ways do attachments constitute or provide normative reasons, and briefly, how do attachment-related reasons relate to other practical reasons? Finally, the chapter turns to the question of the nature of and justification for partiality to oneself.
The Romance of the Rose and the Making of Fourteenth-Century English Literature
Authors: Knox Philip
Published: February 2022

This book examines the place of the French love allegory the Romance of the Rose in fourteenth-century English literary culture. The Rose had a transformative effect on the multilingual literary culture of fourteenth-century England, leaving more material evidence for late medieval English-speaking readers than any other vernacular literary work from mainland Europe. In an ongoing series of encounters both within and beyond the territorial boundaries of Britain, continuously reshaped by new ideas and attitudes from across fourteenth-century Europe, the Rose in England became a cultural artefact of huge significance for a wide range of readers—men and women, clerics and laypeople, those at the centre and those on the fringes of the aristocratic courts. The central assertion of this book is that by tracing the radically plural afterlife of the Rose as it moves through a series of distinct but related cultural spheres in fourteenth-century England, it is possible to reveal the poem’s decisive importance in shaping the terms in which literary value was produced and contested. The book examines three different but related spheres of literary culture: aristocratic reading communities, Latinate philosophical poetry, and ideas about poetry and the role of the poet derived from classical literature. In each of these areas, the Rose is revealed to be both a generative and a disruptive text for the English poets who followed in its wake, making possible the newly ambitious writing that emerged in the generation that included Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, John Gower, and the Gawain-poet.
The Opposition to Statistics
Authors: Goldman Lawrence
Published: February 2022

The enthusiasm for numbers of the early and mid-Victorian eras was not universal. This chapter examines those writers and cultural leaders who mocked the passion for statistics. Disraeli practised a type of performative politics in which detail and accuracy were immaterial. His calculations were often wrong. He also opposed the grant of any further state funds for Babbage’s Calculating Engine when Chancellor of the Exchequer. In Hard Times (1854), Dickens’s only novel set in the industrial north, he mocked the statistical and utilitarian outlook in the shapes of Bounderby, Gradgrind, and M’Choakumchild. In Ruskin’s most important statement of his principles, his chapter on ‘The Nature of Gothic’ in The Stones of Venice (1853), he warned against seeking exactitude for its own sake and turning men, thereby, into machines. But the most caustic of all the critics was Thomas Carlyle who, in his essay on Chartism (1838) devoted a chapter to ‘Statistics’ and satirized the passion for counting while people starved and the investigators came no closer to answering ‘the Condition of England’ question. These writers, and other instances of opposition to the intrusions of those sent out to count and register the people, are employed in this chapter to demonstrate the existence of a counter-culture to statistics, hostile to the numbering of the people, to the anti-social purposes to which the resulting numbers might be put, and to the mechanistic spirit thus engendered in society.
Conclusion
Authors: Goldman Lawrence
Published: February 2022

The conclusion examines several conceptual issues. Far from dispensing with the need for a God and hastening the decline of faith, for many Victorian statisticians the patterns discoverable in the data were evidence of design in nature, confirming a theological view of the world. Against the arguments of Michel Foucault, and with the example of artisans from the 1820s and 1880s in mind, it is contended that statistics were used to liberate and emancipate social groups as well as to constrain and control them. Against a binary view of numbers as either ‘phenomenal descriptors’ or intrinsically ideological, it is argued that we must approach their use with sensitivity to each historical statistical project and appreciate the different ways they were collected and deployed. Continuities in the history of statistics are emphasized. The ‘data revolution’ today is one of a number of such changes in the nature of information since the late-seventeenth century. In 1822 Babbage saw that the importance of numbers to science, and the scale of calculation required for their analysis, necessitated mechanical computation. Two centuries later, the era of Big Data, based on electronic technology, makes it possible to store and process information at such scale. Babbage projected a research project to collect all the numerical ‘constants of nature and art’, key data and indicators across the natural and social worlds. Today this is realizable, bringing us closer to the original intentions and methods of the founders of the Victorian statistical movement than we may realize.
The World Bank and the Global Rule of Capital
Authors: Cammack Paul
Published: February 2022

The World Bank was charged when it was founded in 1944 with the task of encouraging the development of productive facilities and resources in less developed countries. The Bank has always seen and continues to see the maximum development of global capitalism as the solution to poverty in the developing world. Over more than forty years, it has published policy proposals to this end in annual World Development Reports. These and related initiatives show a consistent focus on proletarianisation—the creation of a healthy, educated, and productive working class in the developing world, along with the construction of an institutional framework conducive to its participation in global value chains and indigenous capitalist development. In the present century, its policy advice has shifted away somewhat from macro-structural and macro-institutional reforms to focus on micro-level reforms that are intended to bring about changes in individual activity and behaviour that will facilitate increased engagement with competitive markets. Most recently, this orientation has been reflected in the priority the Bank attaches to shifting workers in the developing world, and especially women, from the informal into the formal sector, with an emphasis on the creation of productive jobs linked to the world market. This makes it a strong supporter of ‘gender equality’, understood as equal opportunity for women in education and work.