bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The authenticating voice in Beowulf
Authors: Greenfield Stanley B. 
Published: September 2008

Two major concerns of recent Beowulf criticism have been (1) to establish the extent to which the poet used his pagan heroic narrative to shadow forth Christian meaning and (2) to establish the exact attitude of the poet towards his hero and towards the social institutions and mores of his hero's day – which, as we know, was several centuries before the poet's own. A nexus of such considerations has been the last word of the poem, lofgeornost: in the concluding lines the poet reports that the mourning Geats said that…he wære wyruldcyning[a]manna mildust ond mon(ðw)ærust,leodum liðost ond lofgeornost. (3180–2)There have been arguments on the basis of other contextual uses of lofgeorn that this word for ‘most eager for praise’ must have an unfavourable connotation here in Beowulf and hence carry the implication of a moral flaw in the hero, though these arguments have not, in my opinion, been convincing. But even if we accept a favourable connotation in this instance, since Beowulf's warriors would hardly be speaking ill of their fallen chieftain during his funeral rites, we still have the problem of deciding whether the poet himself was being sympathetic towards the warriors' view, or whether he was taking an ironic stance or attitude towards that praise from his undeniably Christian outlook.
The use of modal verbs in complex sentences: some developments in the Old English period
Authors: Ogawa Hiroshi 
Published: September 2008

In his oft-quoted study of indirect discourse (dependent statements, dependent desires and dependent questions) in Old English, J.H. Gorrell concludes the section on ‘the use of the auxiliaries’ by observing in his statistics an increasing frequency of their use in the period, which he relates to the loss of distinctive subjunctive inflexions:The conclusions to be drawn from these statistics are very evident … RegardingCP., Or., Boe., andBedeas representatives of Alfredian prose andAH., Boe.[sic],W., andBH. as types of the language of the later period, the above statistics show that the relative proportion of the subjunctive to the auxiliary forms in the former period is as 3 to 1, while at the time of Ælfric the proportion is as 2 to 1. This postulates, therefore, a growing tendency in the language to make use of the auxiliary constructions, and this tendency was fostered by the gradual breaking-down of the old subjunctive forms, until in course of time the periphrastic constructions almost entirely replaced the inflectional forms.
The blood of Abel and the branches of sin:Genesis A, Maxims Iand Aldhelm'sCarmen de uirginitate
Authors: Wright Charles D. 
Published: September 2008

The Old EnglishGenesis A, in a moralizing expansion of the biblical narrative, describes how sin sprouted and spread in evil branches from the blood of the murdered Abel:Critical discussion of this passage has reflected a basic disagreement about the presence of allegory in the poem. Bernard F. Huppé finds three levels of meaning in the passage:Literally, the descendants of Cain, born after his sins, are a progeny of affliction, because they perished in the Flood. Symbolically, they are children of affliction because they dwell in the City of Babylon, of which Cain is the spiritual founder. In its moral significance Cain's sin represents the earthly beginning of all mortal, Babylonian sin …
King Alfred's ships: text and context
Authors: Swanton M. J. 
Published: September 2008

TheAnglo-Saxon Chronicle'swell-known reference to King Alfred's plan for a new design of war-ships is problematic both in general and in detail. In the account of the year 897 (recte896), we are told how, after the raids made along the coast of Wessex by Danish gangs based in East Anglia and Northumbria, and in particular with raiding-vessels (OEœscas, ONaskar) which they had built ‘many years before’, Alfred ordered ships of a new type to be constructed to meet the Danish menace. In the near-contemporary Winchester manuscript (A) the critical passage reads:Þa het Ælfred cyng timbran langscipu ongen ða æscas. Þa wæron fulneah tu swa lange swa Þa oðru. Sume hæfdon lx ara, sume ma. Þa wæron ægðer ge swiftran ge unwealtran ge eac hieran Þonne pa oðru; næron nawðer ne on fresisc gescæpene ne on denisc, bute swa him selfum ðuhte Þæt hie nytwyrðoste beon meahten.
Linguistic facts and the interpretation of Old English poetry
Authors: Mitchell Bruce 
Published: September 2008

In their admirable edition ofThe WandererDunning and Bliss give the meaning ‘as when’ forswain line 43bpinceð him on mode pæt he his mondryhtenclyppe ond cysse, ond on cneo lecgehonda ond heafod, swa he hwilum ærin geardagum giefstolas breac (41–4)and defend their gloss in the following words: ‘Here literary considerations must outweigh linguistic arguments.’ And in his latest book, Stanley B. Greenfield approves: ‘Thus Bliss–Dunning…can properly say that though usage ofswameaning “as when” here “would be unique”, but [sic] “literary considerations must outweigh linguistic arguments”.’ I do not approve. I would say that Dunning and Bliss have let literary considerations outweigh not linguisticarguments, but linguisticfacts. Hence my title.
Three men and a boat: Sutton Hoo and the East Saxon kingdom
Authors: Pearson Michael Parker , Van De Noort Robert , Woolf Alex 
Published: September 2008

In August 1939 I drove from Cambridge with Hector and Nora Chadwick to see the Sutton Hoo dig. Phillips and Chadwick had never met and both were slightly apprehensive. The encounter turned out to be a great success. As we were leaving Chadwick said to Charles ‘It's the grave of King Rædwald you know. I've no doubt of that.’Glyn Daniel (address given at the funeral of Charles Phillips at Teddington on 2 October 1985)
Why Is There No Hermeneutics of Natural Sciences? Some Preliminary Theses
Authors: Markus Gyorgy 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentContemporary natural sciences succeed remarkably well in ensuring a relatively continuous transmission of their cognitively relevant traditions and in creating a widely shared background consensus among their practitioners – hermeneutical ends seemingly achieved without hermeneutical awareness or explicitly acquired hermeneutical skills.It is a historically specific – emerging only in the nineteenth century – cultural organization of the Author-Text-Reader relation which endows them with such an ease of hermeneutical achievements: an institutionally fixed form of textual and intertextual practices, normatively posited ways of adequate reception and criticism, etc. The same organization also explains a number of their often-discussed epistemic and cultural characteristics: their depersonalized objectivity, the social closure of their discourse and their reduced cultural significance, the shallow historical depth of their activated traditions, etc.The cognitive structure and the social function of contemporary natural sciences are intimately interwoven with a set of sui generis cultural relations that are partially fixed in the textual characteristics of their literary objectivations. A comparative hermeneutical analysis of natural sciences as a specifically constituted and institutionalized cultural genre or discourse-type brings into relief those contingent cultural conditions and relations to which some of their fundamental epistemological characteristics are bound, or at least with which they are historically closely associated.
The Essence and Soul of Seventeenth-Century Scientific Revolution
Authors: Bechler Zev 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentThe inclusion of an item within a theory may be essential or accidental, and if the former then the explanation of its meaning and of its inclusion in the theory cannot be by accidental events and circumstances. Since all events and circumstances – be they social, political, religious, psychological, etc. – are accidental vis-à-vis the ideas they occasion, they cannot serve as explanation of these ideas. The only way to explain the ideas is by showing their essentiality to the theory rather than their importance to the people. Thus, the place of spirits and souls within seventeenth-century science is explained by Platonic ideology.This demands a concept of nature which is thoroughly efficient causative, and a concept of explanation which is thoroughly informative. This means that theories must explain any given effect by a cause which is separable from it and is conceptually heterogeneous to it. Such a nature and such an explanation are inherently paradoxical and irrational, which explains the preponderance of these traits in seventeenth-century science as created by Kepler, through Galileo and Descartes to Newton.The primary efficient-causal and explanatory agency is force, which is ontically distinct from matter and from the motion it causes in matter. Soul, spirit and active principle are mere variants of force. Thus, their presence in seventeenth-century science is explained only by their being conceptually essential to any Platonic philosophy of nature.
Visible Colleges: Structure and Randomness in the Place of Discovery
Authors: Hillier Bill , Penn Alan 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentVisible colleges, in contrast to the “invisible colleges” familiar to historians of science, are the collective places of science, the places where the “creation of phenomena” and theoretical speculation proceed side by side. To understand their spatial form, we must understand first how buildings can structure space to both conserve and generate social forms, depending on how they relate structure in space to randomness. Randomness is shown to play a crucial role in morphogenetic models of many kinds, especially in spatial forms and in social networks. We argue here that it can also play a crucial role in the advance of science.
Laboratory Space and the Technological Complex: An Investigation of Topical Contextures
Authors: Lynch Michael 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentThere can be no doubt about the moral and epistemological significance of what Shapin (1988) calls the “physical place” of the scientific laboratory. The physical place is defined by the locales, barriers, ports of entry, and lines of sight that bound the laboratory and separate it from other urban and architectural environments. Shapin's discussion of the emergence of the scientific laboratory in seventeenth-century England provides a convincing demonstration that credible knowledge is situated at an intersection between physical locales and social distinctions. In this paper I take up Shapin's theme of the “siting of knowledge production,” but I give it a different treatment – one based on ethnomethodological studies of work (Garfinkel 1986; Garfinkel et al. 1981; Garfinkel et al. 1989; Livingston 1986; Liberman 1985; Lynch 1985a; Lynch et al. 1983; Bjelic and Lynch forthcoming; Morrison 1990; MacBeth 1989). Without denying all that can be witnessed in the spectacle of the scientist at the bench and of the architectural habitat of the bench, I argue that the “place” of scientific work is defined by locally organizedtopical contextures. The paper describes two examples of such spatial orders – “opticism” and “digitality” – associated with distinct complexes of equipment and practice. These topical spaces might initially be viewed as “ideal” or “symbolic” spaces, but I argue that they are no less material (and no less social) than the “physical setting” of the laboratory; indeed, they are the physical setting.
Knowledge of the Territory
Authors: Revel Jacques 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentFew spaces have been given such great importance as national space. It is often seen as the fulfillment of a predestination–simultaneously geographical, political, ethnic, and functional – granted affirmation by history. This being especially true for the French territory with its ancient history.This paper takes a different approach as regards the establishment of knowledge concerning the national territory. Looking at two of the many ways of knowing the territory–proto-statistics and the map–it aims at showing that the acquisition of this knowledge is a discontinuous, partly cumulative process, with social, political, and cognitive rationales, which were heterogeneous and even contradictory for a long period of time.
“The Mind Is Its Own Place”: Science and Solitude in Seventeenth-Century England
Authors: Shapin Steven 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentIt is not easy to point to the place of knowledge in our culture. More precisely, it is difficult to locate the production of our most valued forms of knowledge, including those of religion, literature and science. A pervasive topos in Western culture, from the Greeks onward, stipulates that the most authentic intellectual agents are the most solitary. The place of knowledge is nowhere in particular and anywhere at all. I sketch some uses of the theme of the solitary philosopher across a broad sweep of history, giving particular attention to its deployment in and around the scientific culture of seventeenth-century England. I argue that the rhetoric of solitude is strongly implicated in individualistic views of society and empiricist portrayals of scientific knowledge. Solitude is a state that symbolically expresses direct engagement with the sources of knowledge – divine and transcendent or natural and empirical. At the same time, solitude publicly expresses disengagement from society, identified as a set of conventions and concerns which act to corrupt knowledge. Hence, the study of the social uses of solitude adds further support to the notion that problems of knowledge and problems of social order are solved together.
Science and Politics Between Domesticated and Radicalized Pragmatism
Authors: Unger Roberto Mangabeira 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentThis paper introduces a distinction between two understandings of the pragmatic tradition: domesticated and radicalized pragmatism. The main difference between these two views concerns the feasibility and moral legitimacy of a radical critique of an existing practice such as science, politics, and so on. It is argued that domesticated pragmatism, with its emphasis on local rather than global perspective, has led to trivialization and degeneration of self-reflective critique. Without rejecting pragmatism as such, this paper urges a reinterpretation of this tradition so as to make room for more thorough forms of critique of both science and social practice.
Heidegger, Science, and the Mathematical Age
Authors: Roubach Michael 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentThe purpose of this article is to read Heidegger's critique of modern science —especially in What Is a Thing? —as evolving from ontological issues that preoccupied Heidegger in the period after the publication of Being and Time. The main issues at stake are formal ontology and its connection with mathematics and modern mathematical physics, and the distinction between formal and regional ontology. The connection between these issues constitutes Heidegger's understanding of mathematics. An exposition of Heidegger's notion of the “mathematical” can help us uncover his assumptions in his critique of modern science, and give us new possibilities for evaluating it.
The Oxford Calculators in Context
Authors: Sylla Edith 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentOur understanding of the predisposing factors, the nature, and the fate of the Oxford Calculatory tradition can be significantly increased by seeing it in its social and institutional context. For instance, the use of intricate imaginary cases in Calculatory works becomes more understandable if we see the connection of these works to undergraduate logical disputations. Likewise, the demise of the Calculatory tradition is better understood in the light of subsequent efforts at educational reform.Unfortunately, too little evidence remains about the Calculators and their context to enable anything like a full reconstruction of the relation of the Oxford Calculators' work to its context. Nevertheless, seeking out and fitting together the bits of information that do remain can add to our insight. Among the topics worth further research are the relation of training incalculationesto later careers in church or government, and the special features of the Calculatory tradition as a tradition consisting of multiple parallel manifestations closely interconnected with other disciplines, ranging from logic and natural philosophy to theology and medicine.
The Formation of “Islamic Mathematics” Sources and Conditions
Authors: Høyrup Jens 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentThe development of autonomous theoretical science is often considered a “Greek miracle.” It is argued in the present paper that another “miracle,” necessary for the creation of modern science, took place for the first time in the Islamic Middle Ages, viz. the integration of (still autonomous) theory and (equally autonomous) practice.The discussion focuses on the mathematical disciplines. It starts by investigating the plurality of traditions which were integrated into Islamic mathematics during its formation, emphasizing practitioners' “sub-scientific” traditions, and shows how these were synthesized in a way virtually unknown in earlier cultures. A discussion of the sociocultural roots of this specific synthesis concludes that a major role was played in the earlier period by the combination of fundamentalist convictions characteristic of Islam – that the most humble daily activity is directly responsible to the highest ontological level, while conversely this highest level is concerned with the humblest ranks of daily existence – with the absence of an institutionalized “Church” able to monopolize the interpretation of the mutual bond of the divine and the everyday levels.As the institutions of learning crystallized around the turn of the millennium, the integrative attitude to theory and practice was fixated institutionally; the latter process is discussed, first with the example of the madrasah institution as the carrier of an arithmetical textbook tradition, and second with that of the bond between astronomy and theoretical geometry.
Experimental Accuracy, Operationalism, and Limits of Knowledge – 1925 to 1935
Authors: Beller Mara 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentThis paper analyzes the complex and many-layered interrelation between the realization of the inevitable limits of precision in the experimental domain, the emerging quantum theory, and empirically oriented philosophy in the years 1925–1935. In contrast to the usual historical presentation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as a purely theoretical achievement, this work discloses the experimental roots of Heisenberg's contribution. In addition, this paper argues that the positivistic philosophy of elimination of unobservables was not used as a guiding principle in the emergence of the new quantum theory, but rather mostly as a post facto justification. The case of P. W. Bridgman, analyzed in this paper, demonstrates how inconclusive operationalistic arguments are, when used as a possible heuristic aid for future discoveries. A large part of this paper is devoted to the evolution of Bridgman's views, and his skeptical reassessment of operationalism and of the very notion of scientific truth.
Genius, Method, and Morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760–1860
Authors: Yeo Richard 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentFocusing on the celebrations of Newton and his work, this article investigates the use of the concept of genius and its connection with debates on the methodology of science and the morality of great discoverers. During the period studied, two areas of tension developed. Firstly, eighteenth-century ideas about the relationship between genius and method were challenged by the notion of scientific genius as transcending specifiable rules of method. Secondly, assumptions about the nexus between intellectual and moral virtue were threatened by the emerging conception of genius as marked by an extraordinary personality – on the one hand capable of breaking with established methods to achieve great discoveries, on the other, likely to transgress moral and social conventions. The assesments of Newton by nineteenth-century scientists such as Brewster, Whewell, and De Morgan were informed by these tensions.
Evolutionism as a Modern Form of Mechanicism
Authors: von Borzeszkowski Horst-Heino , Wahsner Renate 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentThe idea of evolution doubtlessly marks a revolution in our way of thinking. It is the most recent achievement of philosophy and forms the basis of the modern world picture. Current discussions concerning the status of science now convey the impression that any scientific discipline that wants to satisfy modern requirements must also become a theory of evolution. These discussions ignore the reasons which once induced Kant to desist from reformulating classical mechanics as a theory of evolution and instead to found his critical philosophy, according to which the epistemological starting points of natural science and philosophy are different in principle. In other words, there is no examination of whether the reasons given by Kant are of a principle nature so that they are still valid today, but rather, ignoring Kant's arguments, it is taken for granted that a different physical theory than classical mechanics could achieve this.Because nonlinear thermodynamics in particular is often presented as a candidate that justifies hopes of an evolutionary physics, the position of this branch within the structure of physics will be investigated here. It will be seen that a historical component is introduced into physics via initial, boundary, and other supplementary conditions, but that this does not mean that historicity has been grasped in laws, which is of course the point of a scientific theory of development.It is demonstrated that the conclusion drawn for physics by some authors from nonlinear thermodynamics, according to which physics today becomes an evolutionary physics incorporating the cognitive subject, is wrong. The progress made by modern thermodynamics is, without doubt, significant. The widespread philosophical interpretation of thermodynamics rests, however, on an antiquated ontologization of physical concepts and thus on the usual procedure of mechanicism.If one tries to introduce the conception of evolution into natural science by leveling the difference between philosophy and natural science in a mechanistic manner, then the dialectical evolutionary conception which represents a new epoch of human thinking degenerates to an evolutionism, where lawfulness is replaced by accidentalness.
Images of Knowledge, Social Organization, and Attitudes to Research in an Indian Physics Department
Authors: Raj Kapil 
Published: September 2008

The ArgumentSociologists of Third World science, who share the dominant assumption in the philosophy of science that the “culture” of specific substantive fields of scientific inquiry is invariant across the globe, have, after a period of blind optimism devoted to building a critical mass of scientists in the developing countries, relapsed into a bleaker mood and see the Third World as a peripheral region lacking in “creativity” in its research programs.Challenging the doctrine of the universality of scientific practice by means of an in situ study of an Indian physics laboratory, an attempt is made to bring to light a particular community's shared ideals of knowledge (provided by the specific historico-cultural Indian context) which animate the everyday practice of its field of study and fashion its choice of problems, style of professional communication, attitudes toward experiment, etc. These local ingredients should not be understood as deficiencies with respect to some arbitrary norm (mostly taken as the practice in the particular field of inquiry in the “developed” world) but as what differentiates research practices in different parts of the world.