bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Poems That Solve Puzzles
Authors: Bleakley Chris
Published: October 2020

Algorithms are the hidden methods that computers apply to process information and make decisions. The book tells the story of algorithms from their ancient origins to the present day and beyond. The book introduces readers to the inventors and events behind the genesis of the world’s most important algorithms. Along the way, it explains, with the aid of examples and illustrations, how the most influential algorithms work. The first algorithms were invented in Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago. The ancient Greeks refined the concept, creating algorithms for finding prime numbers and enumerating Pi. Al-Khawrzmi’s 9th century books on algorithms ultimately became their conduit to the West. The invention of the electronic computer during World War II transformed the importance of the algorithm. The first computer algorithms were for military applications. In peacetime, researchers turned to grander challenges - forecasting the weather, route navigation, choosing marriage partners, and creating artificial intelligences. The success of the Internet in the 70s depended on algorithms for transporting data and correcting errors. A clever algorithm for ranking websites was the spark that ignited Google. Recommender algorithms boosted sales at Amazon and Netflix, while the EdgeRank algorithm drove Facebook’s NewsFeed. In the 21st century, an algorithm that mimics the operation of the human brain was revisited with the latest computer technology. Suddenly, algorithms attained human-level accuracy in object and speech recognition. An algloirthm defeated the world champion at Go - the most complex of board games. Today, algorithms for cryptocurrencies and quantum computing look set to change the world.
Computer Dreams
Authors: Bleakley Chris
Published: October 2020

Chapter 3 tells the story of the visionaries that first imagined the computer. In the 19th century, Charles Babbage invented a mechanical computer but failed in his attempts to build it. He and Ada Lovelace wrote a series of programs for the proposed machine. These programs were the first transcriptions of algorithms into sequences of machine executable instructions. After Babbage’s failure, the idea of building a real computer was abandoned for fifty years. As a young PhD student, Alan Turing forever defined the relationship between algorithms and computers. According to his definition, a computer is a machine that performs algorithms. He devised a theoretical computer that allowed him to investigate the limits of computation. This, before a single computer was ever built. Turing went on to work as a cryptographer during World War II. Turing outlined the future of computing but tragically died at the age of 41.
Artificial Intelligence Emerges
Authors: Bleakley Chris
Published: October 2020

Chapter 5 delves into the origins of artificial intelligence (AI). By the end of the 1940s, a few visionaries realised that computers were more than mere automatic calculators. They believed that computers running the right algorithms could perform tasks previously thought to require human intelligence. Christopher Strachey completed the first artificially intelligent computer program in 1952. The program played the board game Checkers. Arthur Samuel of IBM extended and improved on Strachey’s program by including machine learning - the ability of a program to learn from experience. A team from Carnegie Melon University developed the first computer program that could perform algebra. The program eventually reproduced 38 of the 52 proofs in a classic mathematics textbook. Flushed by these successes, serious scientists made wildly optimistic pronouncements about the future of AI. In the event, project after project failed to deliver and the first “AI winter” set in.
The Internet
Authors: Bleakley Chris
Published: October 2020

Chapter 7 exposes the algorithms that are the foundations of the Internet. The Internet relies on “packet-switching” to transfer data between computers. Messages are broken into ‘‘packets’’ of data and these packets are routed across the network in a series of hops between linked computers. The advantage of packet-switching is that the network is easily extended and is robust to isolated computer failures. Data sent on the Internet is protected from errors by means of an algorithm invented by Richard Hamming. His algorithm adds information to packets, enabling receiving computers to detect and correct transmission errors. Communication on the Internet is secured by means of an algorithm published in 1977. The RSA algorithm relies on the properties of large prime numbers to prevent eavesdroppers from reading encrypted messages.
Googling the Web
Authors: Bleakley Chris
Published: October 2020

Chapter 8 explores the arrival of the World Wide Web, Amazon, and Google. The web allows users to display “pages” of information retrieved from remote computers by means of the Internet. Inventor Tim Berners-Lee released the first web software for free, setting in motion an explosion in Internet usage. Seeing the opportunity of a lifetime, Jeff Bezos set-up Amazon as an online bookstore. Amazon’s success was accelerated by a product recommender algorithm that selectively targets advertising at users. By the mid-1990s there were so many web sites that users often couldn’t find what they were looking for. Stanford PhD student Larry Page invented an algorithm for ranking search results based on the importance and relevance of web pages. Page and fellow student, Sergey Brin, established a company to bring their search algorithm to the world. Page and Brin - the founders of Google - are now worth US$35-40 billion, each.
Superhuman Intelligence
Authors: Bleakley Chris
Published: October 2020

Chapter 12 is the story of AlphaGo – the first computer program to defeat a top human player at the board game Go. On March 19, 2016, grandmaster Lee Sedol took on AlphaGo for a US$1 million prize in a best of five match. Experts expected that it would be easy money for Sedol. To most observers surprise, AlphaGo swept the first three games to win the match. AlphaGo was based on deep artificial neural networks (ANNs). The networks were trained with 30 million example moves followed 1.2 million games played against itself. AlphaGo was the creation of a London based company named Deep Mind Technologies. Founded in 2010 and acquired by Google 2014, DeepMind’s made a succession of high profile breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Recently, their AlphaZero ANN displayed signs of general-purpose intelligence. It learned to play Chess, Shogi, and Go to world champion level in a few days.
Integration of one-dimensional equations of motion
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

If the potential energy is independent of time, the energy of the system remains constant during the motion of a closed system. A system with one degree of freedom allows for the determination of the law of motion in quadrature. In this chapter, the authors consider motion of the particles in the one-dimensional fields. They discuss also how the law and the period of a particle moving in the potential field change due to adding to the given field a small correction.
Small oscillations of systems with several degrees of freedom
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

This chapter addresses the free and forced oscillations of simple systems (with two or three degrees of freedom), the free oscillations of systems with the degenerate frequencies, and the eigen-oscillations of the electromechanical systems. This chapter also studies the oscillations of more complex systems using orthogonality of eigenoscillations and the symmetry properties of the system, the free oscillations of an anisotropic charged oscillator moving in a uniform constant magnetic field, and the perturbation theory adapted for the small oscillations. Finally, the chapter addresses oscillations of systems in which gyroscopic forces act and the eigen-oscillations of the simple molecules.
The Hamiltonian equations of motion. Poisson brackets
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

This chapter addresses invariance of the Hamiltonian function under a given transformation and the conservation law, the Hamiltonian function for the beam of light, the motion of a charged particle in a nonuniform magnetic field, and the motion of electrons in a metal or semiconductor. The chapter also discusses the Poisson brackets and the model of the electron and nuclear paramagnetic resonances, the Poisson brackets for the components of the particle velocity, and the “hidden symmetry” of the hydrogen atom.
The Hamilton–Jacobi equation
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

This chapter discusses the motion of particles which are scattered by and fall towards the center of the dipol, the motion of a particle in the Coulomb and the constant electric fields, and a particle inside a smooth elastic ellipsoid. The chapter also addresses the trajectory of a particle moving in the field of two Coulomb centres and a beam of electrons inside a short magnetic lens.
Adiabatic invariants
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

This chapter addresses the adiabatic invariant for a mathematical pendulum, a model of a “gas” consisting of a single molecule in a piston, adiabatic approximation, and a simplified model of an ion H2+. The chapter also discusses the connection between the volume and the pressure of a gas consisting of particles inside an elastic cube, the adiabatic invariants for a charged anisotropic harmonic oscillator in a uniform magnetic field, a magnetic trap, and the action and angle variables for the simple systems.
Scattering in a given field. Collision between particles
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

This chapter addresses the differential and total cross section for the scattering of particles by central field, the scattering of particles by the fixed to ellipsoid, and the small angles scattering of particles by central field as well as a dipol. The authors also discuss the cross section for the process where a particle falls towards the centre of the field, decay of particles and the distribution of the secondary particle, and the change in intensity of a beam of particles travelling through a volume filled with absorbing centres.
Lagrangian equations of motion. Conservation laws
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

This chapter addresses the invariance of the Lagrangian equations of motion under the coordinate to transformation, the transformation of the energy and generalised momenta under the coordinate transformation. The integrals of motion for a particle moving in the field with a given symmetry to the Noether’s theorem, the Lagrangian functions, and the Lagrangian equations of motion for the electromechanical system. The authors also discuss the influence of constraints and friction on the motion of a system, the virial theorem and its generalization in the presents of a magnetic field, and an additional integral of motion for a system of three interacting particles.
Oscillations of linear chains
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

This chapter addresses chain of particles connected by springs as the simplest models used in theory of solids, the travelling and standing waves on a chain, and the free and forced oscillations of N particles which are connected by springs and which can move either along a straight line or along a ring. The chapter also addresses the free and forced oscillations of 2N particles, alternating either with masses or with elastic constants; the free and forced oscillations of the artificial line with inductances and capacitors; and the elastic rod as the limiting case of the system of N particles connected by spring in the limit N tends to infinity.
Non-linear oscillations
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

This chapter addresses the distortion in the free and forced oscillations of a harmonic oscillator caused by the presence of the anharmonic terms in the potential energy, a simple model related to the coupling of the longitudinal and flexural oscillations inmolecules, and two oscillators with a weak non-linear coupling (the so-called Fermi resonance). The chapter also examines non-linear resonances, the parametric resonances, drift of the orbit centre for a charged particle in the weakly inhomogeneous magnetic field, and a mechanical model of phase transitions of the second kind.
Rigid-body motion. Non-inertial coordinate systems
Authors: Kotkin Gleb L. , Serbo Valeriy G.
Published: October 2020

This chapter addresses the inertia tensor and its relation with the mass quadrupole moment tensor, the principal axes and the principal moments of inertia, evolution of the period of the Earth’s rotation around its axis due to the action of tidal forces, and the motion of the gyrocompass at a given latitude. The chapter also addresses precession of a symmetric top, the stability of rotations of an asymmetric top, “motion” of a plane disk which rolls in the field of gravity over a smooth horizontal plane, and the displacement from the vertical of a particle which is dropped from a given height with zero initial velocity. Finally, the chapter discusses the Lagrange point in the Sun-Jupiter system.
Creating and Acquiring Interests in Land: Words and Intentions
Authors: Cooke Elizabeth
Published: October 2020

This chapter discusses the ways in which interests in land can be created and transferred, in terms of the practical, physical requirements. It considers the rules about the formalities for contract and transfer, by way of writing and the use of deeds, and the law’s gradual adaptation to methods of transfer that do not involve paper and ink. The development of electronic land transactions is introduced. The chapter then discusses informal transactions and the exceptions to the formality rules. It provides an introduction to resulting and constructive trusts and proprietary estoppel, and concludes with a discussion of the difficulties associated with family property.
Leases, Licences, and Commonholds
Authors: Cooke Elizabeth
Published: October 2020

This chapter explains the nature of a lease and the distinction between leases and licences. It discusses the introduction of the commonhold as a means to improve the ownership structure for interdependent properties and control the power imbalance between landlord and tenant. The chapter describes the different types of leases, discusses the need for certainty of term, and explains how leases are created and registered. It then examines leasehold covenants, remedies for breach, and the transmission of liability. The chapter explains how leases can be brought to an end, and the statutory protection regimes for tenants, including security of tenure and leasehold enfranchisement.
Whatever Happened to Relativity of Title?
Authors: Cooke Elizabeth
Published: October 2020

This chapter is about relativity of title and the law relating to adverse possession (also known as squatters’ rights), which used to be fundamental to land law but is now far less important following the enactment of the Land Registration Act 2002, where title is registered. The requirements for adverse possession are explained. The chapter examines the case law relating to the human rights implications of squatters’ title. The effect of adverse possession in registered land is explained. Finally, the chapter discusses the reasons why adverse possession continues to be a live concept and evaluates the impact and concerns of the 2002 Act.
Pluralism in European Private Law
Authors: Mak Vanessa
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines the further contours of an instrumental-normative approach, focusing on how the question ‘who does what, and at what level of regulation’ is answered by existing theories of legal pluralism in European private law. It has been said that most theories of legal pluralism in European private law, even if they proclaim to adopt a strong legal pluralist perspective, still fall back on an ordering of some sort. The chapter tests this assumption by analysing how the market rationality of EU law interacts with the juridical rationality of national private laws in relation to three aspects of lawmaking: actors, norms, and processes. It concludes that many theories of legal pluralism in European private law lean towards an ordering of some kind. Yet, at the same time the chapter reveals several instances in which inroads are made on the ordered conception of legal pluralism, which could provide the premises for the further development of a strong legal pluralist theory for European private law.
The Normative Side
Authors: Mak Vanessa
Published: October 2020

This chapter analyses the relations between the various sources of norms introduced in the previous chapter to assess the space for deliberation between lawmaking actors. To that end, the substance of norms developed in private regulation by platforms and through contracting is tested against the objectives and values of existing rules of EU and national contract and consumer laws to establish whether these are adhered to, or not. In terms of substance, the case study focuses in particular on transparency in contracting, that is, the question whether terms and conditions are clear and comprehensible to parties entering into contracts. Practically, two platforms are selected for the case study. One is aimed at connecting users for the exchange of services (Airbnb) and the other for the exchange of goods (Amazon).
More Normativity
Authors: Mak Vanessa
Published: October 2020

This chapter presents a second case study, focusing on standardisation. Standardisation is defined as a process of private regulation whereby private actors engage in the development of standardised norms for particular sectors of industry or for particular types of contract. Standards, which are widely used in European markets, can also serve as a case study for determining whether the substance of norms created through private regulation can fulfil the instrumental-normative aims of a legal pluralist theory of lawmaking in European contract and consumer law. Here, the enquiry is delimited to harmonised standards in EU law. Harmonised standards are developed by European standard-setting organisations (ESOs) at the instigation of the European legislator.
Shakespeare and the Play Scripts of Private Prayer
Authors: Sullivan Ceri
Published: October 2020

Early modern private prayer shows skill in narration and drama. In manuals and sermons on how to pray, collections of model prayers, scholarly treatises about biblical petitions, and popular tracts about life crises prompting calls to God, prayer is valued as a powerful agent of change. Model prayers create stories about people in distinct ranks and jobs, with concrete details about real-life situations. These characters may act in play-lets, or appear in the middle of difficulties, or voice a suite of petitions from all sides of a conflict. Thinking of early modern private prayers as dramatic dialogues rather than as lyric monologues raises the question of whether play-going and praying were mutually reinforcing practices. Could dramatists deploying prayer on stage rely on having audience members who were already expert at making up roles for themselves in prayer, and who expected their petitions to have the power to intervene in major events? Does prayer’s focus on cause and effect structure the historiography of Shakespeare’s history plays: 2 and 3 Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II, Henry V, and Henry VIII?
Discerning a Response to Private Prayer: Richard III and Henry V
Authors: Sullivan Ceri
Published: October 2020

Advice texts on praying argue that this should be a dialogue, but are uneasy about how real and live a conversation can be when talking with an omniscient God, who already knows what will be asked for, how this will be voiced, and what his reply will be, before the prayer ever starts. Pray-ers cope by imagining that God is passible (capable of being moved by their words), and then by reflecting on facts that might support this fiction. Their prayer fails if (or rather, when) it lapses into a monologue that merely apostrophizes its speakers’ projection of a subordinate god. This chapter examines the domesticated version of the theology behind prevailing in prayer, and the passibility of God. It then looks at how Shakespeare’s Henry V and Richard III dramatize the difference between invoking the Almighty and calculating on the actions of a delivery device.
The Special Case of Royal Private Prayer: Henry VIII and Richard II
Authors: Sullivan Ceri
Published: October 2020

Advice texts describe praying for, with, or as though a prince as both an act of grace and as an art of the courtier. Elizabeth I and James VI and I developed strongly differentiated profiles in private prayer. The queen published her addresses to God, addressing him as her fellow sovereign and as her superior. By contrast, the king never published what he said to God, only what God said to him, in the exclusive advisory consultations held in his conscience. Elizabeth joined her people in petitioning God to discern and do his will, James told his people what God’s will was. Prayers written for and about monarchs attempted to manage them within these approaches. Shakespeare’s Henry VIII explores political manoeuvres in prayer, and royal strategies to frustrate these; Richard II shows that grace can drain away from a royal prayer, leaving it theatrical.
From ‘La Grande Chartreuse’ to The British Album
Authors: Matthews Samantha
Published: October 2020

By analysing the late-eighteenth-century reception of ‘The Album of the Fathers’ at the Monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, the chapter offers an exemplary instance of the issues at stake in album culture. The book was instrumental in promoting the elite practice of inscribing occasional texts in albums. In 1789 fashionable newspapers the World and the Oracle publicly fought over ownership of a transcript from the album and of ‘Della Cruscan’ poetry. The quarrel gave rise to scurrilous journalism, satirical prose, and parodic verse in which the term ‘album’ and its occasional and heterogeneous aesthetic was claimed and contested. In William Gifford’s attack on the Della Cruscans, Bell’s poetry anthology The British Album (1790) became shorthand for poetry’s debasement through cultural feminization. The Grande Chartreuse album disappeared during the French Revolution, but created a grand origin myth for the Romantic album.
‘Here you may trace a pigmy hand, / And there a Giant strength’
Authors: Matthews Samantha
Published: October 2020

Albums kept by Sara Coleridge, Edith May Southey, and Dora Wordsworth between the early 1820s and late 1840s show that that although the Wordsworth circle daughters’ access to their famous fathers’ literary networks resulted in books exceptionally rich in album verse by well-known contemporary poets, their poet-fathers’ practical assistance and symbolic influence exacerbated the anxiety of reception for amateur contributors, and complicated each woman’s role as agent and subject of her own book. In the Wordsworth circle albums, scribal publication is perilously close to conventional publication, and contributors negotiate between fulfilling the woman owner’s wishes and articulating awareness of the revered older poets’ scepticism or downright hostility to feminized album culture. The poet-father’s presence turns albums into contested textual spaces where generational, gender, and power dynamics are played out in poetry.
Winning at the Acquisition Game
Authors: Galpin Timothy
Published: October 2020

Winning at the Acquisition Game is a collection of the best materials, insights, tools, and templates which comprise the popular Mergers and Acquisitions course taught in the MBA and Executive MBA programs at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Each chapter provides readers with practical knowledge and tools to help them understand the entire mergers and acquisitions (M&A) process from pre-deal strategy and due diligence, through transaction valuation, negotiations, and closing, to post-deal implementation, workforce motivation, innovation for revenue growth, and results measurement and reporting. As a result, readers will gain valuable insights into the entire M&A process, from beginning to end, connecting traditionally distinct, “siloed” functional expertise across the process. Case examples in the chapters describe how each stage of the process has been implemented by companies across various industries. Each chapter concludes with a set of discussion questions and a self-assessment that readers can use to determine their firm’s current level of M&A capability. Practical frameworks, tools, and templates are also provided in an “M&A Workbook” that readers can apply to their own transactions, now or in the future.
Formulate a Clear M&A Strategy
Authors: Galpin Timothy
Published: October 2020

Mergers and acquisitions are a strategic choice. Favorable regulatory environments, economic expansion, the emergence of new technologies, high stock prices, and liquidity in credit markets have all contributed to creating “waves” of M&A characterized by periods of high and low transaction volumes. M&A is a high-risk growth strategy, with ample evidence demonstrating that buyers struggle to capture value from their transactions. Yet, the Oxford M&A Insights Project found that almost two-thirds (64%) of respondents indicated that their company is “very likely” or “likely” to conduct future transactions. This chapter provides an overview of the strategic options for M&A and how firms develop their M&A strategies. The tools, templates, best practices, potential pitfalls, and a case example of how to go about setting a clear M&A strategy are also addressed, along with the main participants, core activities, buyer’s and seller’s perspectives, and key cross-border considerations.
Integrate to Achieve Accelerated Synergy Capture
Authors: Galpin Timothy
Published: October 2020

A study of 1,000 corporate and private equity executives found that post-deal integration was the number one factor in realizing deal success. While the term “post-merger integration” (PMI) is commonly used, it is very much a misnomer, as PMI should begin early in the deal process, prior to deal close. This chapter covers three main PMI phases, ten key PMI work streams, agile integration management, and how to accelerate synergy capture during integration. The tools, templates, best practices, potential pitfalls, and a case example of how to conduct effective M&A integration are also addressed, along with the main participants, core activities, buyer’s and seller’s perspectives, and key cross-border considerations.
‘New Agnosticism’, Imaginative Challenge, and Religious Experience
Authors: Leech David
Published: October 2020

This chapter makes a contribution to recent discussions within new conceptual territory for agnosticism opened up by John Schellenberg’s work in the philosophy of religion. Critics have recently questioned whether Schellenberg’s defence of non-doxastic imaginative faith in ultimism is the most adequate non-doxastic faith stance or the most adequate proposal for a new research programme in the philosophy of religion. I consider here two possible challenges to ultimism as a non-doxastic faith stance and as a research programme: one from Kantian-inspired religious pluralism; and one from the claim that a broader religious framework proposition (‘ietsism’) is more adequate for these purposes than ultimism. The analysis pays particular attention to the role of religious experience. I conclude that notwithstanding the prima facie force of these two objections, it is still appropriate for an agnostic to embrace ultimistic non-doxastic faith.
Integrity, Self-Absorption, and Clean Hands
Authors: Nili Shmuel
Published: October 2020

Political realities often mean that familiar moral constraints—against lying, manipulating, coercing, and the like—cannot be upheld without serious consequences for a very large number of vulnerable people. It is commonly argued that, under these ubiquitous political circumstances, putting much weight on non-consequentialist integrity reasons amounts to a self-absorbed preoccupation with “clean hands.” This chapter presents an elaborate response to this self-absorption charge, pivoting on two key claims. First, the familiar equation of “integrity” with “clean hands” is misleading: there are important cases where integrity might be compatible with “dirty hands,” and may even actively push agents to dirty their hands. Second, setting up our policy dilemma as a binary choice between “dirtying our hands” and imposing grave costs on many vulnerable people is often problematic. More often than not, such a binary presentation of the policy situation is misleading and self-serving.
“All the Demagogue’s Men”
Authors: Nili Shmuel
Published: October 2020

This chapter revolves around “media demagogues”: politicians who rely on their mastery of the media, and on recurrent lies, as they exploit the electorate’s worst fears and prejudices to gain and retain power. The rise of media demagogues produces integrity complexity for the political actors who surround them, including both political operatives who are considering whether to serve the demagogue, and fellow politicians, who are considering whether to ally with him. From the perspective of both of these kinds of political actors, it may appear as if integrity’s dictates are indeterminate. Should one wash one’s hands clean of the demagogue in the name of personal integrity, or collaborate with him to limit the threats he poses to the polity’s collective integrity? Taking up the cases of Donald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the chapter shows how the integrity framework can offer a systematic solution to this problem.
Epilogue
Authors: James Alison
Published: October 2020

This closing reflection reconsiders the book’s argument retrospectively, from the point of view of the current obsession with facts. It offers evidence that a number of contemporary writers (Annie Ernaux, François Bon, Emmanuel Carrère) directly repudiate fiction in the 1980s and 1990s and turn to experiments with documentary or factual narration. The writers associated with the Inculte group (Maylis de Kerangal, Emmanuelle Pireyre) privilege documentary investigation without rejecting fiction, while Éric Vuillard, Yannick Haenel, or Laurent Binet mobilize the historical archive in documentary or docufictional works. This proliferation of documentary forms reconnects with and expands the earlier documentary practices studied in this book, while also responding to the omnipresence of data and information in the digital age.
Historical Significance of Das Leben Jesu
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

The aim of this chapter is to determine the historical significance of Strauß’s most famous book, Das Leben Jesu, which was first published in 1835. The book had a major religious and political significance. Its religious significance lay in undermining faith in the historical testimony behind the New Testament, which had been the chief reason for belief in the Bible in orthodox Protestantism. Its political significance came from undermining the belief in Christian revelation, which had been the main rationale for the authority of the state. Strauß also formulated the famous distinction between right- and left-wing Hegelianism, which became the main focus of political debate in the 1830s and 1840s.
Strauß’s Method and Its Problems
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

The main subject of this chapter is Strauß’s method in Das Leben Jesu. It argues that Strauß’s method was simply historical and that it had no definite philosophical or theological presuppositions. Its aim was simply to determine the reliability of the historical statements in the New Testament; Strauß took into consideration all the factors determining that reliability, viz., the reliability of witnesses, their consistency among each other, whether their account was first- or second-hand. The role of the principle of causality in Strauβ’s method is then discussed. This chapter also considers the charge that Strauß’s method was too negative, guaranteeing its results by simply presupposing the principle of causality. It is argued that Strauß’s method was not only critical but also hermeneutic, attempting a historical understanding of the intentions behind a text. Finally, the question is broached of the Hegelian influence on Strauß’s method. It is argued that Strauß presupposed no Hegelian metaphysics in the application of his method, but that certain aspects behind its form—that it is hermenetical and internal—are still Hegelian.
The Rogue’s Gallery
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: October 2020

This chapter treats Strauß’s Streitschriften, his chief polemical writing against the first critics of Das Leben Jesu. These critics came from many quarters, from young Hegelians to orthodox pietists and Lutherans. The Streitschriften are very revealing about Strauß’s ambivalence on certain issues, viz., whether the dogma of Christ’s resurrection was necessary for Christianity; they also show that Strauß held out the possibility of an allegorical interpretation of the Bible. The Streitschriften are most interesting about the reasons for Strauß’s allegiance to criticism and the authority of reason. Here we see why Strauß believed that critique was essential for religious belief.
Reuse of Statuary and the Recycling Habit of Late Antiquity: An Economic Perspective
Authors: Barker Simon J.
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines questions about the role of statue reuse and recycling in the building and sculptural economies of Late Antiquity, leading to an increased understanding of the cultural changes that characterized this practice during this period. It addresses various approaches to the economic importance of and rationale behind the reuse and recycling of statuary and other sculpted material in Late Antiquity. The basic economic premise that materials were reused and recycled because they were available more economically than new materials seems clear, but we should be careful though not to reduce reuse-recycling solely to economics. Reuse-recycling was also a cultural choice rather than a purely pragmatic practice, and one that expressed a late antique mentality. Sculpted stone was a recognizable commodity in the ancient world and its recycling and reuse have both social and economic implications for the artistic and ideological changes that defined the recycling habit of Late Antiquity.
Old Buildings, Building Material, and the Death of Recycling in Post-Roman Britain
Authors: Fleming Robin
Published: October 2020

This chapter sketches out two long-standing and ubiquitous material practices in Roman Britain: the reuse and refurbishment of old masonry buildings, walls, and foundations; and the repurposing of stone, brick, and tile. Both the reuse of buildings and building material, so I argue, were standard practices in Britain from the second century on, but both disappeared within a few generations of the Roman state’s withdrawal from Britain. So it is the process of the decline and fall of these practices and the reasons that stand behind their ending that are the focus of my chapter. Its emphasis reflects the fact that although I am very interested in ancient recycling practices, as an early medieval historian, I am more engaged by the story of their demise. This chapter is more focused upon the demise of such practices.
Introduction
Authors: Elsner Jaś
Published: October 2020

This book has three purposes. First, it is an attempt to put on the table the category of the figurine as a key conceptual and material problematic in the art history of antiquity. It does so through comparative juxtaposition of close-focused papers drawn from deep art-historical engagement with specific ancient cultures, all but the last from the first millennium BCE; the cultures addressed being ancient Greek, ancient Chinese, Mesoamerican before the arrival of Europeans, and Roman in late antiquity. Second, in doing so, and alongside other books in this series by the same authors, it makes a claim for comparative conversation across the disciplines that constitute the art history of the ancient world, through finding categories and models of discourse that may offer fertile ground for comparison and antithesis....
Custom, Common Law, and the Constitution of English Renaissance Literature
Authors: Elsky Stephanie
Published: October 2020

Custom, Common Law, and the Constitution of English Renaissance Literature argues that, ironically, custom was a supremely generative literary force for a range of Renaissance writers. Custom took on so much power because of its virtual synonymity with English common law, the increasingly dominant legal system that was also foundational to England’s constitutionalist politics. The strange temporality assigned to legal custom, that is, its purported existence since “time immemorial,” furnished it with a unique and paradoxical capacity—to make new and foreign forms familiar. This monograph shows that during a time when novelty was suspect, even insurrectionary, appeals to the widespread understanding of custom as a legal concept justified a startling array of fictive experiments. This is the first monograph to reveal fully the relationship between Renaissance literature and legal custom. It shows how writers were able to reimagine moments of historical and cultural rupture as continuity by appealing to the powerful belief that English legal custom persisted in the face of conquests by foreign powers. Custom, Common Law, and the Constitution of English Renaissance Literature thus challenges scholarly narratives in which Renaissance art breaks with a past it looks back upon longingly and instead argues that the period viewed its literature as imbued with the aura of the past. In this way, through experiments in rhetoric and form, literature unfolds the processes whereby custom gains its formidable and flexible political power. Custom, a key concept of legal and constitutionalist thought, shaped sixteenth-century literature, while this literature, in turn, transformed custom into an evocative mythopoetic.
Introduction
Authors: Elsky Stephanie
Published: October 2020

The introduction offers a definition of custom as the basis of England’s common law and provides a lexicon of legal custom, including terms like time immemorial, the ancient constitution, consent, and commons, each of which contribute to the significance and power of custom as a legal concept. It argues that custom appealed to English literary writers who were experimenting with genre and form because of their society’s broad skepticism of novelty and thus it was crucial to ideas of Renaissance authorship. It situates the project within the larger body of work on early modern law and literature by showing how the latter can illuminate changes in the former. It further argues that the study of early modern law and literature should inform how we understand periodization because it offers different models of how the Renaissance understood itself and the past.
Forgetting Custom?
Authors: Elsky Stephanie
Published: October 2020

The final chapter explores the most extreme political usage of custom: to resist or even overturn a monarch. I argue that just as custom was invoked to justify popular rebellion during the sixteenth century, so too is it called upon to navigate their contentious staging in The Book of Sir Thomas More, a play that William Shakespeare is generally thought to have helped revise after its censorship, and Hamlet. I explore how the former play makes use of proverbs to recuperate rebellion from the charge of innovation while the latter play uses custom within a narratio, or description of offstage events by a messenger, to open up a space for the possibility of revolution, a concept and practice associated with breaking from the past. Drawing on political theology, this chapter contends that Hamlet discloses the possibility of custom’s enduring, generative power.
Deciding the Boundaries of ‘Wisdom’
Authors: Dell Katharine J.
Published: October 2020

Whilst it is generally agreed that the book of Proverbs is the mainspring of ‘wisdom’, there is considerable disagreement as to what exactly, beyond Proverbs, to include in the wisdom category and what the criteria for inclusion should be. That Job and Ecclesiastes should also form this core and that it should be further defined by the apocryphal books of Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon is often taken for granted, but the material is very diverse in nature and genre. Then the question arises, should the net be widened to other parts of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, to narratives such as the Joseph Narrative and Succession Narrative or to a slippery selection of psalms that appear to be ‘wisdom’ in character, to Song of Songs and beyond. In fact, how do we classify any text showing significant wisdom influence? Indeed, is this categorization of ‘wisdom’ helpful at all? In this chapter, I suggest that there is a ‘core’ of wisdom material and that, as I have argued elsewhere, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes make up this core. Here, I go beyond this statement to evaluate the associations of other material with this core and suggest that the notion of family resemblance is a helpful descriptor for complex relationships between this material. I also consider the role of Solomon as the ‘father’ of wisdom and as the (symbolic?) figure that holds this ‘family’ together.
The Third Solomonic Book
Authors: Dell Katharine J.
Published: October 2020

The issue of the relationship of the Song of Songs to wisdom is discussed in this chapter under three headings: that of the Solomonic attribution and references to the King; that of editorial links with the genre of wisdom, and finally that of relationship to wisdom motifs and female configurations in Proverbs. It is argued that the Solomonic inspiration for the work extends beyond the attribution alone to include references to him in the text and that references to ‘the King’ enhance this sense. That the editorial links with wisdom are confirmed with not only 8:6b–7 being seen as of the abstract nature of proverbial wisdom, but also the refrains in 2:7; 3:5, and 8:4. This wisdom connection may, however, form a pre-literary layer in connection with the Solomonic context rather than simply a redactional one. Finally, it is argued that there are close links in themes and imagery with the figures of woman Wisdom and the loose woman that suggest that the Song of Songs may have been an inspiration for the portrayal of such figures, although the more moralistic framework of the wisdom material is acknowledged. Thus whilst the Song is not classified as wisdom literature, it genre being primarily that of ‘love songs’, its links with wisdom circles are acknowledged, both at the stage of oral inspiration and at that of writing down and its ongoing relevance as an inspiration to the wisdom writers is evidenced in the portrayal of female figures in Proverbs 1–9.
‘The Lord Loved Him’
Authors: Dell Katharine J.
Published: October 2020

This chapter argues that from the first mention of Solomon in 2 Sam 12:24 where we are told that ‘The Lord loved Him’, he is portrayed in an idealized light, as somewhat of a cardboard cut-out of a character who can do no wrong. Despite a light critique of his actions towards the end of the 1 Kings account, the canon takes up this same idealization which is based on his role as the highest ethical paradigm—the embodiment of wisdom. In Proverbs, the characterization is reduced to authoritative voice, but in Ecclesiastes there is an interesting use of his ideal character as a paradigm not for emulation but for a test of the worth and/or worthlessness of wisdom. In the Song of Songs whilst he is also an authoritative voice, as in Proverbs, he also appears as a character evoking remembrance of his wealth and wisdom. The essential character of Solomon as wise king chosen and ‘loved’ by God runs throughout his portrayal and provides an ethical paradigm for those seeking to become wise.
Solomon’s Wisdom and the Egyptian Connection
Authors: Dell Katharine J.
Published: October 2020

A canonical link of Solomon with wisdom literature is evidenced in the headings in Proverbs, in the Song of Songs and in Ecclesiastes. In I Kings we find the attribution to Solomon of wisdom, his prayer for wisdom and its characterization of his reign, and so on. Both the attributions and the Kings account are usually seen as idealizations from later writers. There is an accompanying scepticism about the historical events of Solomon’s reign. The question is raised how and why Solomon was remembered in the canon. Were the reasons socio-economic such that his reign represented a ‘novum’ (Brueggemann), or was there a Solomonic enlightenment? Were there wisdom schools generating wisdom-influenced narratives or training administrators? I argue for a substantial wisdom movement in the pre-exilic period which was a main feature of Solomon’s reign. The reputation he gained for wisdom suggests that he made the art of wisdom his own and his international connections with Egypt and Sheba support the internationalization of the enterprise.
‘I will solve my riddle to the music of the lyre’ (Psalm 49: 4 [5])
Authors: Dell Katharine J.
Published: October 2020

This chapter explores the relationship between wisdom psalms and the cult, asking whether Mowinckel’s characterization of the wisdom psalms as late and non-cultic is justified. It explores the possibility of wisdom influence on the psalter in early and later times, looking at questions of context and theology. Rather than seeing wisdom influence as mainly a scribal activity that was a post-exilic editing of the final form of the psalter, it is argued that the influence of wisdom went back to the days of the early Israelite cult. Its influence was strong also in post-exilic times, which confirms a connection between wisdom and cult at this stage (Perdue), however wisdom forms that shaped the literary development of some psalms and wisdom ideas that included an emphasis on creation and order are seen to be an essential part of the earliest self-identification of Israel through her worship.
Jeremiah, Creation and Wisdom
Authors: Dell Katharine J.
Published: October 2020

There is amassing, in the scholarship on both Jeremiah and on wisdom literature, a growing case for connections between Jeremiah and wisdom. Given that the wisdom worldview takes its starting point from the concept of God as creator and shows a particular interest in the natural world, a quest for such themes in Jeremiah is appropriate. It will be seen that the two themes of creation and wisdom intersect in the message and theological outlook of this prophet and form a key area of concern. Jeremiah is not ‘wisdom literature’ by classification, but there is evidence of wisdom’s genres within its pages, part of a rich tapestry of influences, both literary and theological. I also address the elusive question of who ‘the wise’ are that Jeremiah critiques so vociferously and why he does so.