bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Changing the Past: Failure
Authors: Lewis David
Published: October 2023

This is the fifth chapter of The Paradoxes of Time Travel. In The Paradoxes of Time Travel Lewis argues that time travel as it is imagined in certain science fiction narratives is a genuine possibility. In his own words, Lewis aimed, ‘(1) to solve a philosophical problem hitherto largely ignored or casually mis-solved by philosophers […]; (2) to introduce the layman to various topics in metaphysics, since our problem turns out to connect with many more familiar ones; and (3) to show several of my favorite doctrines and methods in metaphysics’. In the course of his 6 lectures, Lewis lays out his Quinean four-dimensionalist metaphysics and explains how our ordinary concept of person allows for causal loops. This requires a notion of ‘reverse causation’ which Lewis explains by analysing causation in counterfactual terms. Finally, Lewis elaborates on the sense in which we can and cannot be intelligibly said to be free to change the past.
Changing the Past: Success
Authors: Lewis David
Published: October 2023

This is the sixth chapter of The Paradoxes of Time Travel. In The Paradoxes of Time Travel Lewis argues that time travel as it is imagined in certain science fiction narratives is a genuine possibility. In his own words, Lewis aimed, ‘(1) to solve a philosophical problem hitherto largely ignored or casually mis-solved by philosophers […]; (2) to introduce the layman to various topics in metaphysics, since our problem turns out to connect with many more familiar ones; and (3) to show several of my favorite doctrines and methods in metaphysics’. In the course of his 6 lectures, Lewis lays out his Quinean four-dimensionalist metaphysics and explains how our ordinary concept of person allows for causal loops. This requires a notion of ‘reverse causation’ which Lewis explains by analysing causation in counterfactual terms. Finally, Lewis elaborates on the sense in which we can and cannot be intelligibly said to be free to change the past.
Probability Measures
Authors: Lewis David
Published: October 2023

This is the first chapter of Confirmation Theory. Confirmation Theory is a book manuscript that Lewis wrote in 1969 on the basis of a course he’d given at UCLA. He submitted the manuscript to Harvard University Press who expressed an interest. It consists of seven chapters covering intensional semantics, probability measures, rational belief, principles of indifference and Carnap and Hintikka’s inductive systems. The work was intended to be accessible to students with, as Lewis put it, ‘hairy high-school algebra’. He described the manuscript to Richard Jeffrey as ‘Mathematically self-contained, with proofs for the major theorems’. Lewis originally envisaged that Carnap’s The Continuum of Inductive Methods (1952) be used as an accompanying text. Lewis focused on Carnap and Hintikka in particular because he believed that their work constituted the attractive core of what competing theories of confirmation had in common.
Supervenience of Chances (1979)
Authors: Lewis David
Published: October 2023

In this short paper, dating from 1979, Lewis considers three alternative hypotheses about the relationship between the present distribution of chances and the history of the world.
You Can’t Win (2001)
Authors: Lewis David
Published: October 2023

In this unfinished short paper, dating from 2001, Lewis considers a family of paradoxes of the form ‘(ThesisU) where U=df –necU, where whatever the reading of ‘nec’, we have nec(U iff –necU)’. Here ‘nec’ can be read as any of four modalities: necessity, belief, knowledge, or truth. Lewis considers versions of these paradoxes in classic, mediaeval, and contemporary texts. They include the Liar Paradox, Buridan’s Thirteenth Sophism, and Sorensen’s ‘omissive’ paradox of knowledge.
Systems of units
Authors: Maggiore Michele
Published: October 2023

In elecrodynamics there are two common system of units, SI and Gaussian, each one with its own advantages, that differ in the definition of unit for the electric charge. We define them and discuss their relation, which involves some subtleties. The SI system is nowadays the most widely used in most contexts, but an acquaintance with the Gaussian system can also be very useful, in particular to prepare the transition from classical electrodynamics to quantum field theory, where (for reasons that we will explain) nowadays only Gaussian units (or Heaviside–Lorentz units) are used. Therefore, while we will use SI units in this book, we will explain how to quickly translate the results into Gaussian units and, in app. A, we will collect some of the most important formulas, written in Gaussian units.
Elementary applications of Maxwell’s equations
Authors: Maggiore Michele
Published: October 2023

Historically, the mathematical descriptions of phenomena in the domains of electrostatics, magnetostatics and electromagnetic induction provided the building blocks from which Maxwell’s equations were eventually inferred, with a “bottom-up” approach in which equations valid in specific settings were generalized and unified. Such a bottom-up approach is appropriate for a first introduction to electromagnetism. In this more advanced course, we take instead a “top-down” approach: after having presented the full Maxwell’s equations in the previous chapter, we develop systematically their consequences starting, in this chapter, with the most elementary applications to electrostatics (general solution with the Green’s function methods, capacitors, conductors) magnetostatics (Biot-Savart law), and electromagnetic induction (Lenz’s law, electromotive force, inductance). This does not respect the actual historical development, but has the advantage of allowing for a logically clear and streamlined presentation. Several applications are discussed in a long Solved Problems section, at the end of the chapter.
Multipole expansion for static fields
Authors: Maggiore Michele
Published: October 2023

When a source is localized in a volume V of typical linear size d, and we are only interested in the field that it generates at distances r << d, we expect, physically, that only the gross features of the source distribution will be important, rather than all its fine details. The tool that allows us to formalize this intuition is the multipole expansion. If the source is static, the multipole expansion is an expansion in powers of d/r. In this chapter we study the multipole expansion for static sources, both in electrostatics and in magnetostatics, identifying the electric and magnetic multipoles and studying explicitly the fields generated by the electric dipole, magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole, the energy of multipoles in an external field and the interaction energy between multipole moments.
Post-Newtonian expansion and radiation reaction
Authors: Maggiore Michele
Published: October 2023

This chapter is very advanced and discusses the relativistic corrections to the dynamics of the sources in the near zone, in an expansion in powers of v/c (that, borrowing from the nomenclature used in General Relativity, we call the post-Newtonian expansion). These corrections are obtained from a systematic expansion for small retardation effects and include both ‘conservative’ terms, that do not affect the energy of the system (the leading correction being expressed by the Darwin Lagrangian), and dissipative terms that reflects the fact that a system of accelerated charges emits electromagnetic radiation at infinity and therefore loses energy. This will manifest itself through “radiation-reaction” forces in the near region, expressed by the Abraham-Lorentz and Abraham-Lorentz-Dirac equations. In this context, we will also have to deal with divergences that appear for point charges. We will see that a conceptually clean treatment of the problem only emerges by using renormalization techniques, typical of quantum field theory, despite our purely classical context.
Electromagnetic waves in material media
Authors: Maggiore Michele
Published: October 2023

In Chapter 9 we studied electromagnetic waves propagating in vacuum. In this chapter we study how electromagnetic waves are affected by the properties of the medium in which the propagate, described by frequency-dependent constitutive relations such as those studied in the previous chapter, or by non-trivial boundary conditions, as in the case of electromagnetic waves propagating in waveguides. We introduce the refraction index, the dispersion relations of electromagnetic waves in materials, phase and group velocity. We study the propagation of em waves in metals; we find transverse electromagnetic waves, which penetrates a metal up to a distance caracterized by the skin depth, as well as longitudinal waves at the plasma frequency, and we study the corresponding plasma oscillations. We then discuss the propagation of electromagnetic waves in waveguide and the corresponding TE, TM and TEM modes.
Punctuation and language history
Authors: Owens Jonathan
Published: October 2023

Chapter 5 introduces 17+ case studies discussed in greater or lesser detail which serve as the basis for reconstruction based on contemporary sources. With two exceptions, the individual studies illustrate a fundamental point, namely that Arabic language history is characterized by a multitude of discontinuous isoglosses which can join contemporary dialects as disparate as Uzbekistan and that of the Lake Chad area (LCA). It is cautioned, invoking Lass’ (1993) principle, that non-contiguity does not bestow license to invoke parallel independent development, which is shown to be vastly overused as a historical linguistic concept in Arabic language history. To the contrary, in the default case non-contiguity provides evidence for a common source, with the different reflexes spread via populations diffusing in different directions.
Morphosyntax as an adapative mechanism I
Authors: Owens Jonathan
Published: October 2023

Chapters 8 and 9 describe the much later contact between Arabic and the languages of the Lake Chad area which began about 1400. Chapters 8 and 9 open up new methodological ground in linguistics in general, in that the entire basis of comparison are two large oral corpora, one from the LCA, the other from Egypt, from where ancestral LCA derives. Chapter 8 discusses the dramatic manner in which the idiomatic structure of LCA Arabic which it inherited from its Egyptian Arabic parent has been all but replaced by an idiomatic structure characterizing languages of the Lake Chad area, Kanuri in particular. The idea of lexical realignment is introduced as an explanatory concept to model the significant shift of lexical matching implied in idiomaticity.
Toward a typology for historical linguistics
Authors: Owens Jonathan
Published: October 2023

To explicitly orientate this picture of Arabic within historical linguistics Chapter 12 compares Arabic with the history of two further languages, Icelandic and English, concentrating on morphology and nominal gender. As is well known, Icelandic, from the Old Icelandic period (ca. 800–1200) up to the present, has changed little. English, on the other hand, underwent a drastic change from the Old English period, when it was not in fact very different from Old Icelandic morphologically, to the end of the Middle English period (ca. 1500). This is illustrated with comparative paradigms. Icelandic is said to be “alinear”—it shows negligible change (or “development”) over a nearly identical chronological period as English. English is said to be “linear.” English gradually moves from one state to another over the defined period of time. Arabic has elements of alinearity, but is also multilinear, with elements of change distributed across many individual speech communities.
Why Arabic is special and special for historical linguistics
Authors: Owens Jonathan
Published: October 2023

Arabic is a Semitic language, but there is a huge amount of historical linguistics which, at this juncture at least, can be understood only as a history of Arabic. Many aspects generalize over Arabic, but do not generalize to other Semitic languages. Once this is recognized, the contribution which Arabic can make to a broader comparative taxonomy of historical linguistics is enormous. The history of Arabic is complicated. Its Semitic patrimony illuminates, but only in part. It is not reducible to a simple dichotomy such as Old vs. New, is not limited to a history defined by scripts, cannot be trivialized into a dozen independent “Arabics,” is not explicable via a linguistic simplification process from Classical Arabic, not reducible to a development calibrated to interval time, and is not subject to repeated, independent innovations of the same process over and over in its extended geographical manifestations.
Foreign Policy and Security Strategy
Authors: Wight Martin
Published: October 2023

As a matter of principle Martin Wight professed a lack of interest in defining practical prescriptions to deal with immediate strategic and foreign policy issues, notably in his lecture “What Is International Relations?” Despite his reputation as a scholar focused on historical and philosophical matters, he articulated noteworthy policy prescriptions in book reviews and scholarly studies on topics such as the balance of power; international order, including neutrality, nationalism, and community; nuclear weapons and international politics; interests, honour, and prestige in statecraft, including that of the British Empire and Commonwealth; disarmament and public opinion; and the United Nations. These writings have received less attention than they deserve, owing in part to Wight’s perfectionism. As the collection of works in this volume shows, he took distinctive positions on practical policy questions in his publications and in unpublished and obscurely published papers. He raised the question “Does Peace Take Care of Itself?”—as implied by Kantian principles—and concluded that it does not, and that purposeful action remains necessary. He asked, “Has Scientific Advance Changed the Nature of International Politics in Kind, Not Merely in Degree?” and delivered a qualified “no” in reply, in view of the continuing willingness of governments, including rulers of Western societies, to regard defeat in combat as a greater threat than nuclear war. The scope for constructive action via the United Nations is restricted by political and structural constraints, notably the veto held by the five permanent members of the Security Council.
The Balance of Power and International Order
Authors: Wight Martin
Published: October 2023

Except for perhaps one speech by Demosthenes, classical antiquity offered the Renaissance “no more than the simple rule of balancing your enemies off against one another.” Commynes in the fifteenth century provided “the first recognition that the rivalries within the states-system fall into a kind of chequer-board pattern, where contiguous states tend to be hostile to one another, and their mutual hostility can be a restraint upon both.” The coalition against Philip II provided “the beginnings of the grand alliance, the master-institution of the balance of power.” During the two centuries from the treaty of Utrecht at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713 to the beginning of the First World War, “the balance of power was generally accepted among diplomatists and statesmen as the constituent principle of European international society.” Many publicists and statesmen respected propositions associated with the balance of power, including the aim of “reconciling international order with the independence of the several members of the community of states.” The champions of collective security in the League of Nations sought to give “the system of the balance of power a legal framework, to make it more rational, more reliable, and therefore more effectively preventive. … The failure of the League of Nations was the most decisive occurrence in international history since the Peace of Westphalia.” Yet “since 1945 a decline in theoretical concern for international order has paradoxically coincided with a balance of power that has defied pessimists by its durability.”
Nationalism and World Order
Authors: Wight Martin
Published: October 2023

Wight observed that “the word ‘nation’ is almost interchangeable with ‘power’ or ‘state’ and equal to a member of international society; and the sense is illustrated by the phrase ‘the law of nations,’ and survives in the adjective ‘international’ for which we have no synonym at all.” Owing to “the principle of national self-determination,” applied within and outside Europe since 1919, new nations are “being admitted to the U.N. at an average rate of one a year.” Proponents of the “majority view … assume that it will sort itself out, that the new nationalism will run its course and reach an equilibrium. … We argue that there is a world-wide international society with demonstrable institutions in the U.N., that the material and technological unification of the world is bound to speed its cultural unification, and that in the long run we may look forward to the evolution and acceptance of common (perhaps mainly Western) institutions, ideas, and standards. The minority view, on the other hand, holds that it is possible that the process of decolonization, the rise of new nations in Asia and Africa, is analogous to the barbarian invasions, the self-assertion of peoples outside our own civilization. In this case, we may see the world-wide international society as entirely superficial and concentrate our attention on the winding-up of European hegemony and the contraction of Western society within its proper frontiers as within a besieged castle.”
Has Scientific Advance Changed the Nature of International Politics in Kind, Not Merely in Degree?
Authors: Wight Martin
Published: October 2023

In this paper Wight investigated the consequences of scientific advance, especially the development of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, for international politics. A Great Power must be able “to fight a great war, to establish and maintain men and supplies on enemy soil, to endure a prolonged battle of attrition. And this implies not only the decisive weapon and industrial power, but today perhaps more than ever in the past, geographical extent, size of population, and morale.” In modern Europe, Wight observed, there have been few examples of depugnatio, violent fighting to extinction. “Hitler in 1945 wanted to annihilate the German people and destroy the foundations of their existence, but [Albert] Speer and others refused to carry out his orders. (Is this a precedent for conditions of nuclear war?) It seems that, in Western international politics, resistance has seldom if ever been carried beyond a point at which it was still possible to change policies and make a formal capitulation instead.” The examples of depugnatio in antiquity of Melos, Carthage, and Jerusalem led Wight to conclude “that in so far as it is thought possible that governments might in certain circumstances choose nuclear war rather than the alternative, a new situation has come into international politics; or, that certain precedents for political behavior that have had no importance since before the Christian era may now again have acquired some relevance.” Governments, including that of the United Kingdom, continue to express preparedness for nuclear war rather than submit to defeat by foreign Powers.
The Political Consequences of Nuclear Weapons
Authors: Wight Martin
Published: October 2023

Nuclear weapons have not ended war as an instrument of policy. Most members of international society at any time have been Small Powers. Their neutrality has been violated in peace and war by Great Powers. Their deepest conception of war has not been to impose their wills on others, but to have sufficient resistance to prevent the Great Powers from imposing their wills on them. The argument that nuclear weapons have made a decisive change in international politics would be greatly strengthened if it were possible to show that governments and peoples now fear war more than they fear one another. Were this the case, international relations would indeed be revolutionised. But all evidence seems against it. The assumption of every foreign policy and the great mass of every electorate still seems to be that the potential enemy is more to be feared than nuclear war. War is still generally believed to be in certain circumstances the lesser evil, and to that extent still presents itself as a possible “rational” alternative. There has been a change in degree, not in kind, in the role of nuclear weapons. The logic of armed resistance has been carried to a new step, to the point where death may be reasonably regarded as preferable to submission—even collective, national death. But this does not enter a new moral climate. It is a manifestation of the heroism that we are accustomed to admire. Thermopylae, the Alamo, and Khartoum were not “irrational.”
Arms Races
Authors: Wight Martin
Published: October 2023

Wight argued as follows: “Since disarmament is part of the cant of popular politics, disarmament proposals are part of political warfare. Governments in putting forward disarmament proposals are concerned, first, to make a good impression on their own constituents, and secondly, to enhance their own influence and perhaps embarrass their opponents in international affairs. The arms race described by Montesquieu, with some ironical exaggeration, took the form of augmentation of troops by rival monarchs. But the arms race was given a sinister propulsion by a triple development that became apparent during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The first was the mechanization of war, which produced an independent momentum of technical innovation in armaments. The second was the growth in Western countries of a public opinion about foreign policy. This has chiefly taken a nationalist and militarist form, concerned that the defenses of the country for which it spoke were being outstripped by rival Powers. But we may remember that there has also been a steady current of pacifist and internationalist opinion, giving rise to an international peace movement of lofty aims and negligible influence. The contemporary use of the word technology to mean not the theory of the practical arts, but the totality of applied science in itself, or the combination of scientific expertise and industrial production, seems to reflect the sense of the arms race as autonomous, a sorcerer’s apprentice over which the civilization that introduced it has no control.”
Interests of States
Authors: Wight Martin
Published: October 2023

In this paper Wight distinguished between state interests, vital interests, moral and ideological interests, and choices among interests in crises. In the seventeenth century, Puffendorf divided state interests into categories such as permanent and temporary. In the nineteenth century Metternich was perhaps the first to use the phrase “vital interests.” Wight suggested that “vital interests” are those that “a state deems essential to its security and independence, and for which it will if necessary go to war.” Such interests were originally formulated in legal terms: “interests which Powers wished to exclude from the scope of treaties of arbitration.” The Monroe Doctrine offers a classic example of an articulated vital interest protecting a sphere of influence. “The determining of vital interests is subjective” in that their effective content depends on the state’s ability to define, assert, and defend them. Moral and ideological interests include non-material and intangible factors such as appeals to “honour” and standards of righteous behavior. Religious and revolutionary doctrinal interests may in practice “become subordinated to considerations of raison d’état.” In crises “the mountain range of vital interests stands out momentarily clear above the haze or mist of routine policy.” Outcomes may vary fundamentally, depending on circumstances: “An indubitable vital interest may in fact not be defended. … A vital interest may be defended by the wrong means, or at the wrong time.” In practice, Wight concluded, “There is no sharp distinction between vital interests and non-vital.”
The United Nations General Assembly
Authors: Wight Martin
Published: October 2023

In September 1947 the US proposed revisions in the veto power of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The Soviet Union rejected these suggested revisions. Washington also proposed that the General Assembly establish an Interim Committee on Peace and Security. (The General Assembly founded such a committee on a temporary basis in November 1947 and then on an indefinite basis in 1949, but it has not met since March 1951.) There is a single crevice in the mausoleum of the Charter through which the UN might grow towards light and sanity. That is Article 51 of the Charter, which allows collective security in anticipation of action by the UNSC. But the veto is not the only question. It is arguable that the UN would be more dangerous if it worked than it is impotent. It is a quinquevirate which, given unanimity, possesses despotic and irresponsible powers. If the five can agree about the exercise of the “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security,” there are no legal limits to their power, and the rest of the United Nations are compelled to carry out their directions. The UN has in no case consented to a definition of its own jurisdiction; it has tended to encroach upon domestic jurisdiction and to override treaties. The September 1947 U.S. proposals try to rectify the veto, but they do not touch the decision of Dumbarton Oaks, where the Western Powers agreed to an organisation built on a quasi-totalitarian principle.
Two Blocs in One World
Authors: Wight Martin
Published: October 2023

Owing in part to “improvements in communications,” Wight wrote, “the number of Great Powers … is getting smaller and smaller. … In 1919, for example, there were seven Great Powers: the victorious Big Five of the Peace Conference, America, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan; and then Germany, whom they had defeated, and Russia, whom Germany had defeated, both in a state of collapse, but both expected to resume their place as Great Powers in due course. … Now, today, only Russia and America would have any chance of being able to stand against the world without any allies at all. … Beneath the vertical conflict, so to speak, between the two blocs, there is a horizontal conflict throughout the world between the two ideologies. … On the Russian side this is seen negatively, in the extreme precaution taken against such penetration, … the care with which the Soviet citizen is screened from Western ideas, the persecution of bourgeois tendencies among Soviet artists.” … The United Nations has nonetheless become a forum to expose “the fundamental inconsistency of principle between Russia and the West on the question of whether displaced persons were to be treated as individuals with human rights or as the property of the government of the state from which they originally came.”
Review of David Mitrany, A Working Peace System, An Argument for the Functional Development of International Organization, fourth edn with a new Introduction (London: National Peace Council, 1946)
Authors: Wight Martin
Published: October 2023

As the collection of works in this volume shows, Martin Wight took distinctive positions on practical policy questions in his publications and in unpublished and obscurely published papers. He raised the question “Does Peace Take Care of Itself?”—as implied by Kantian principles—and concluded that it does not, and that purposeful action will be necessary. Wight wrote, “This is a useful essay, but an essay in political theory rather than political science. Everything that has happened since the first edition, particularly the history of U.N.R.R.A. [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] and of the specialized agencies of the United Nations, suggests that the functional development of international organization cannot eradicate or by-pass conflicts of interests: it presupposes their absence.”
Review of Frances Perkins, US Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York: Viking Press, 1947; and London: Hammond, Hammond & Co., 1947)
Authors: Wight Martin
Published: October 2023

In Wight’s view, “This is the best book that has yet been written about Franklin Roosevelt, and it will remain a major authority. Miss Perkins was his Secretary of Labor. … Her central theme is the spiritual evolution of the tall and arrogant young patrician of 1910, with ‘a youthful lack of humility, a streak of self-righteousness, and a deafness to the hopes, fears and aspirations which are the common lot’ (p. 14), into the Roosevelt of the New Deal. The largest part of the book is naturally concerned with his social policies. … There are also important chapters on the War President, his energizing effect upon the war effort, and the simplicity (unless Miss Perkins here failed to probe the subtleties of his mind) of his Soviet diplomacy. But it is not for evidence on these matters that the book is most important, but for its picture of how the man’s mind worked, and his policies were formed. Miss Perkins describes him with affectionate and critical detachment. He was ‘the most complicated human being’ she ever knew (p. 9), with his intelligence and naivety, humility and boyish vanity, his ‘four track mind’ (p. 305), his opportunism that was an artistry in political construction, his dependence on non-political friendships, his generous hatred of the callousness of the rich. … It is Roosevelt’s greatness that he could inspire the loyalty of such a colleague while he was alive, and such a book as this when he is dead.”
Plural Propositional Quantification
Authors: Fritz Peter
Published: October 2023

The theory C5 motivated in previous chapters is shown not to entail the principle Atomicity, which the previous chapter noted to be required for taking talk of possible worlds at face value. Plural propositional quantifiers, which capture ways of quantifying plurally over propositions in the present higher-order framework, are introduced. The logic of these plural propositional quantifiers includes a principle of plural rigidity, as well as a plural comprehension principle. In the resulting logic, the principle of Atomicity becomes derivable. Plural propositional quantifiers therefore vindicate appeals to possible worlds. Having established Atomicity, the logic of metaphysical necessity is narrowed down further: a formula of propositional modal logic is true under every interpretation of the proposition letters just in case it is a theorem of S5.
Reinventing Babel in Medieval French
Authors: Campbell Emma
Published: October 2023

How can untranslatability help us to think about the historical as well as the cultural and linguistic dimensions of translation? For the past two centuries, theoretical debates about translation have responded to the idea that translation overcomes linguistic and cultural incommensurability while never inscribing full equivalence. More recently, untranslatability has been foregrounded in projects at the intersections between translation studies and other disciplines, notably philosophy and comparative literature. The critical turn to untranslatability re-emphasizes the importance of translation’s negotiation with foreignness or difference and prompts further reflection on how that might be understood historically, philosophically, and ethically. If translation never replicates a source exactly, what does it mean to communicate some elements and not others? What, or who, determines what is translatable or what can, or cannot, be recontextualized? What linguistic, political, cultural, or historical factors condition such determinations? Central to these questions is the way that translation negotiates with and inscribes asymmetries among languages and cultures, operations that are inevitably ethical and political as well as linguistic. This book explores how approaching questions of translatability and untranslatability through premodern texts and languages can inform broader interdisciplinary conversations about translation as a concept and a practice. Working with case studies drawn from the francophone cultures of Flanders, England, and northern France, it explores how medieval texts challenge modern definitions of language, text, and translation and, in so doing, how such texts can open sites of variance and non-identity within what what would become the hegemonic global languages we know today.
Introduction
Authors: Campbell Emma
Published: October 2023

Starting with Babel, the Introduction outlines the book’s main arguments and situates its discussion of translation and untranslatability in relation to broader scholarly debates. In distilling translation’s entanglement with the asymmetries of human languages, Babel brings into focus a framing of those practices that connects medieval conceptions of translation to current discussions taking place across translation studies, comparative literature, and modern languages. Babel is a figure for the communicative extremes of translatability and untranslatability that has been reinvented across time; it also names a mode of thinking with, through, and about untranslatability that is itself a form of (re)invention. These interconnected senses of reinventing Babel converge in the work of medieval writer Evrat and modern philosopher Jacques Derrida, who each interpret the story of Babel in ways that reflect on translatability and its limits. These two engagements with the Babel myth are used to contextualize the book’s main arguments.
Introduction
Authors: Herd David
Published: October 2023

The introduction opens by detailing the scale of contemporary global immigration detention to demonstrate that the present moment should be understood in terms of the production of geopolitical non-personhood. A brief history of the production of geopolitical non-personhood is traced, from the establishment of border detention in early-twentieth-century anglophone immigration legislation to Hannah Arendt’s naming of geopolitical non-personhood in The Origins of Totalitarianism. The introduction then outlines the mid-century discourse with which the book is principally concerned, in which the geopolitical non-person was recognized as a crucial figure in post-war history and in which serious attempts were undertaken to reimagine geopolitical space. Key writers constituting this discourse are introduced: the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Hannah Arendt, Charles Olson, and Frantz Fanon. Their intersecting understanding of the global production of expulsive space is framed with reference to Henri Lefebvre and Paul Gilroy.
Moving
Authors: Herd David
Published: October 2023

Chapter 3 details the crisis of movement that followed the Second World War, a crisis, as contemporary historical accounts detailed, that had two poles: forced movement and forced stasis. Defining this polarity as the dialectic of displacement, the chapter considers how mid-century authors sought to re-inscribe the primacy of human movement and to reimagine its political dynamics. Drawing on Thomas Nail’s conceptualization of the figure of the migrant, the chapter addresses: Fanon’s intricate account of movement in the hostile environment of the colonial setting; the implications for movement of the Universal Declaration, noting its suspension of the question of eligibility and its contradictory formulation of the right to asylum; Arendt’s articulation of a politics of arrival rooted in the principle of natality; and Olson’s development of a poetics of movement at the level of individual physiology and political geography. The chapter thus reasserts and reimagines the right to freedom of movement.
‘It’s all about trust’
Authors: Meyer David R.
Published: October 2023

Prominent financiers testify that trust is the bedrock of their business. Indicators of trustworthiness consist of three character traits of the trustee, the person being trusted: competence, integrity (honesty), and benevolence. Financiers frame most of their concern with trust in terms of integrity. They expand this trait to include transparency, keeping your word, maintaining confidentiality, and reputation. They utilize face-to-face interactions, building trust over time, and their networks to verify the trustworthiness of others. Over time, these interactions build relational social capital. Financiers participate in networks of trust within their firms and with a larger network of financiers whose members possess structural social capital. The community of mutual trust is a cohesive network in which most members have multiple linkages that convey information throughout the network. Network linkages supply knowledge of the trustworthiness of members, and these comprise efficient communication mechanisms to exert sanctions for malfeasance or untrustworthy behaviour.
Context-Sensitivity
Authors: Russell Gillian K.
Published: October 2023

This chapter concerns the indexical barrier to entailment. It introduces some of the history of the barrier through the work of Casteñeda, Perry, and Lewis, and provides basic background on context-sensitivity and indexicals and the under-appreciated consequences for logic. Then a simplified version of Kaplan’s Logic of Demonstratives is introduced, which turns out to permit a potential counterexample analogous to ought implies can in the normative case. The chapter argues that in the indexical case the correct solution is much more obvious, setting things up for the solution to the normative tetralemma in the next chapter.
Introducing the thought experiment
Authors: Wilkinson David M.
Published: October 2023

This introductory chapter sets out the book’s central thought experiment: ‘For any planet with carbon-based life, which persists over geological timescales, what is the minimum set of ecological processes that must be present?’ It contrasts this process-based approach with the more conventional ‘entity’-based approach used by most university-level ecology texts—where entities are things such as individuals, populations, species, communities, ecosystems, and the biosphere. The chapter also introduces the concept of the ‘Gaian effect’: the long-term effect of any given process on the persistence of life on a planet. The key ‘fundamental processes’ described in the following chapters are summarized.
Merging of organismal and ecological physiology
Authors: Wilkinson David M.
Published: October 2023

All organisms modify their environment to some extent. Daisyworld models illustrate the theoretical possibility that these modifications could lead to planetary regulation for life-friendly conditions, but also illustrate the need for substantial biomass for this to occur. In academic ecology, the recent concentration on biodiversity may have tended to obscure the fundamental importance of biomass, which will often be dominated by a limited number of species. This ‘mass ratio’ effect is important at both the ecological community and the planetary scale. Once biomass is sufficient for the merging of organismal and ecological physiology, the planet will tend to show some level of regulation for life-friendly conditions. The size of this effect is currently a key unknown in both Earth-based environmental science and astrobiology.
Photosynthesis
Authors: Wilkinson David M.
Published: October 2023

Photosynthesis—both anoxygenic and oxygenic—allows access to new sources of energy. Oxygenic photosynthesis has the potential to create an oxygen-rich atmosphere and so allow aerobic respiration, which yields much higher amounts of energy than anaerobic respiration. The amount of oxygen added to the atmosphere is intimately linked to the burial of organic matter in sediments; therefore marine phytoplankton are crucially important in maintaining the levels of atmospheric oxygen on Earth. Anoxygenic photosynthesis will have a positive Gaian effect by providing an important source of energy. Oxygenic photosynthesis is more problematical; as with anoxygenic photosynthesis it provides an energy source, but the oxygen given off is likely to be toxic to organisms evolved in anoxic conditions. It is currently impossible to know if we should expect most biospheres to evolve oxygenic photosynthesis. However, improvements in telescope technology should allow us to look for oxygen-rich atmospheres around distant Earth-like planets.
Carbon sequestration
Authors: Wilkinson David M.
Published: October 2023

While traditionally ecology textbooks only discuss the short-term carbon cycle, the role of life has been crucial in the geological long-term carbon cycle through silicate weathering. Arguments have been put forward for the co-evolution of CO2 levels and terrestrial plants—with adaptations to lower CO2 levels allowing large leaves to evolve. It seems clear that on Earth, without the effect of life our planet would currently have a temperature that would rule out the survival of eukaryotic life. This suggests that carbon sequestration has a positive Gaian effect. However, this is probably a local conclusion which cannot be generalized to all other planets. More generally, these ideas illustrate the importance of biomass as a key feature of global ecologies. The effects of vegetation (or plankton) on carbon cycles are more directly linked to available biomass than species richness.
Nutrient cycling as an emergent property
Authors: Wilkinson David M.
Published: October 2023

Arguments based on both in vitro and in silico models suggest that biogeochemical cycles will readily evolve on planets with life, along with many of the putative fundamental processes described in this book. Artificial life models illustrate the potential for these emergent cycling systems to have a positive Gaian effect. The well-known potential for exponential growth in unconstrained ecological systems suggests that these emergent systems will often regulate their environments around low nutrient states (biotic plunder), rather than at states that optimize productivity. In this context it makes sense to define Gaia in relation to prolonged habitability of a planet, but not as a process that maximizes biological productivity.
From processes to systems
Authors: Wilkinson David M.
Published: October 2023

This chapter draws together the various themes in the book and argues for the importance of a systems view of global ecology. It also considers a range of models that may help understand the evolution of Gaia. In addition it discusses the priorities of conservation biology from an Earth systems perspective. It points out that a systems view of nature—replete with feedbacks—is a remarkably recent way of viewing the world, but one that is crucial to understanding the Earth system and the changes we are making to it
Race and Republican Peace
Authors: Gustafson Sandra M.
Published: October 2023

The literary-political friendship of Charles Chesnutt and Albion Tourgée captures enduring tensions in the peace movement. This chapter opens with a discussion of Anglo-Saxon identity as Tourgée and Chesnutt defined it: for Chesnutt, the term referred to white people; for Tourgée, Anglo-Saxons could be of any race as long as they were committed to republican political ideals. Tourgée described multiracial “Anglo-Saxons” as “Twentieth-Century Peacemakers,” while Chesnutt characterized US imperialism as an extension of white supremacism. The remainder of the chapter examines the literary implications of this difference in their novels. Reflecting his contributions to the 1868 North Carolina Constitution, Tourgée made the town meeting a touchstone for his portrayals of the Reconstruction South. In The Marrow of Tradition, Chesnutt took the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 as an occasion to examine the “reclamation” of North Carolina by white supremacists intent on undoing Tourgée’s legacy.
First steps
Authors: Upton Graham , Brawn Dan
Published: October 2023

This first chapter begins by describing the nomenclature for the various types of data. The chapter continues by introducing the idea that a set of data represents a small selection from a larger population. Successive samples from a population will be similar but not identical: this is sampling variation and underlies the concept of a random variable. The chapter continues by discussing the various ways in which a population may be sampled. If a complete list of population members is available, then members may be chosen at random for inclusion in the sample. If there are distinct types in the population, then each type may be sampled separately. If the population is widespread then it may be economical to select regions at random and sample intensively within these regions. If there are scarce types of individual in the population that are of special interest, then these can be deliberately included with weights applied later in analysing the results
Probability distributions
Authors: Upton Graham , Brawn Dan
Published: October 2023

There is often a simple formula that describes the probabilities of the various possible values: for example, for a fair die, we can say that each side is equally likely to occur. Since such a formula describes how probability is distributed between the alternative values, it is described as a probability distribution. This chapter shows how to calculate the mean and variance of a probability distribution and how to combine the means and variances of several distributions. It deals with both discrete distributions such as the roll of a die and the distributions of continuous variables such as time, weight and distance. The link between sample and population is examined by observing how a histogram illustrating sample outcomes develops into a smooth function as the complete population is observed. The observation is made that, for any reasonably symmetric distribution, most values will lie within two standard deviations of the mean.
Comparing proportions
Authors: Upton Graham , Brawn Dan
Published: October 2023

This chapter examines methods for testing whether the probability of an event varies from one situation to another. As a specific example the chapter uses information concerning the male survivors of the loss of the Titanic. Do the survival rates differ between male crew members and male passengers? Amongst the male passengers, is the cabin class relevant? The specific test introduced is the so-called likelihood-ratio test. Various related terms are odds, odds-ratios and relative risk. If a test suggests that the event probabilities are not all equal to the theoretical probabilities, then the next step is to decide where the differences are manifest: this requires an examination of so-called residuals. An important application of this type of goodness-of-fit test is in examining the efficacy of medical tests for a disease. A summary is provided by Youden’s index which combines the notions of sensitivity (the probability that a diseased patient is correctly diagnosed) and sensitivity (the probability that a patient without the disease is correctly diagnosed
Deconstructing Positive Obligations
Authors: Stoyanova Vladislava
Published: October 2023

This chapter lays the ground by deconstructing positive obligations, explaining how they correlate to rights and what the references to positive obligations’ content, scope, and types actually mean. The chapter explains that despite the priority of rights as organizational principles in the European Convention on Human Rights, these rights have to be matched with obligations. These obligations are institutionally mediated through the State; they are characterized by plurality: a right can trigger multiple obligations that at a very general level can be divided into positive and negative; and, despite the clear justifications that promote the imposition of positive obligations, they raise crucial questions about the intrusive role of the State in the particular political community.