Histories

Daniel Sennert (1572–1637), professor of medicine and natural philosophy in Wittenberg, defended a highly unusual philosophical system. This paper examines Sennert’s vision of natural philosophy within the context of the rapidly changing environment of the seventeenth century and relates his philosophical innovations to his methodology. The main result is that Sennert’s postulation of corpuscles with substantial forms, though it takes place within the framework of Aristotelian natural philosophy, directly influences his philosophical view of qualities. Full article

While throughout modern history it has been shown how thoroughly biological discourses were shaped by conceptions originating in the theory and praxis of breeding, for the medieval period similar studies are mostly absent. This paper offers a symmetrical history of theory and praxis of breeding by asking to what extent they shaped medieval conceptions of human ‘race’ and ‘ancestry’ in Europe. For scholarly knowledge of breeding, the analysis relies on Albertus Magnus’ extensive Aristotelian work De animalibus. For the practical knowledge of the breeders, scattered indications from the secondary literature are compiled and promising primary sources are outlined for further research. The paper finds that various concepts and practices whose origins are commonly placed in the early modern period were already present in the Middle Ages, including the concept of reproductive heredity and the view that creation diversified over time through reproductive ancestry. Breeding practices, thus, existed before the rise of genetics in modern biology. The medieval conceptions of ‘race’ and ‘ancestry’ underwent conceptual transfers from the non-human into the human sphere, collapsing the qualitative distinction of the two spheres into one quantitively graded overarching image of nature. Full article

At the entrance of some churches in Tuscany (Italy), the reproduction of an apparently undecipherable inscription can be found. Beginning in the 18th century, this epigraphic puzzle has originated a debate on its interpretation. This study proposes a hypothesis based on the Latin alphabet used in texts contemporary to the churches where the inscription is reproduced and a possible interpretation of the message consistent with the official religious doctrine. The proposed deciphering is extended to the full text, including some signs that were previously considered geometric forms or a specific elaboration of letters not attested in other contemporary documents. Full article

Deserts confuse, fogging memory and electrifying the imagination. In 1853, on Utah’s Sevier River, a ritualized killing spawned a folklore of deserts that lives on to this day. Captain John W. Gunnison, an engineer, had detoured into an ambush. Dismembered, decapitated, his heart torn from his chest, he had died, it was said, by order of the Mormon prophet and Utah’s Latter-day Saints. Fabulized over the decades, the tale was contorted with an evil king in a desert kingdom, with ghoulish assassins and restless corpses undead. Folklore saw what historians have been slow to perceive about hauntings in desolation. Memories of trauma run deep in disquieting strangeness. Places presumed to be empty set dark expectations for horror. Full article

This essay historicizes the concept of nature in French anarchist pedagogy around 1900. I argue that anarchist cosmology was not dualist in the sense that it did not neatly separate the natural from the cultural or social. Nature was rather understood as an ever-evolving realm that encompassed nonhuman and human entities. This example should encourage historical scholarship to look more deeply into what anthropologists sometimes call “naturalist ontology”. Instead of conceiving it as a fixed worldview, we should investigate its genealogy, transformations, and contestations. Full article

While long ignored, the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead has attracted considerable interest and wide academic reception since the 2000s. One reason for the renewed interest in Whitehead’s work is most certainly that his philosophy and concepts offer a way out of dualistic schemes of thought that have dominated the conceptual framework of the West since modernity. In my paper, I focus on Whitehead’s undoing of the opposition between nature and subjectivity, for it is a crucial aspect of Whitehead’s concept of nature not to exclude subjectivity from the ‘realm of nature’. For Whitehead, subjectivity is a fundamental feature of the whole of reality and by no means exclusively human, leading to a radically non-anthropocentric, pluralistic notion of the subject. Full article

This paper argues that the current age is best understood as a theological age in that its normal approach to the world is one based on a high level of abstraction. Theology stands in contrast with piety, which derives much more from immediate experience and embodies common sense. The cultural and intellectual development of Europe and the West can be understood in terms of the interaction of two distinct modes of thinking and viewing the world, namely theology and piety, and the way in which theology has come to dominate Western culture to the detriment of piety. Hence, the dominance of Greek rationalism within the West has led to a one-sided culture that gives priority to rationalist modes of thought. There has been a continuing tradition of piety in the West, but its existence has tended to be somewhat fugitive as can be seen, for example, in Musil’s depiction of the ‘other condition’ and in J S Mill’s personal breakdown caused by an excess of theology. The implications of a theological approach for history are evident as historical developments are viewed through the rigid prisms of perspectives that either fragment the study of history into a series of disconnected narratives endowed with their unique telos or impose an all-encompassing narrative that erases differences as well as potentialities. In both cases, it is the theological mode of thought—which has dominated the West since the so-called birth of rationalism—that turns history into ideology. This paper contends that the current condition calls for a new history of philosophy that captures and responds to the crisis affecting the West’s self-understanding and sense of purpose. Full article

We describe a key moment during the world’s attempt to come to terms with enormously expanding populations. China was an extreme case, both in the magnitude of its population explosion and in its government’s control of reproduction through the One-Child Policy (OCP). The U.S. had been a founder and the main financial supporter of The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Starting in 1998, UNFPA’s program in China attempted to move the OCP away from two decades of coercive family planning and toward acceptance of the women’s rights–centered global consensus that emerged from the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development. In 2001, a conservative U.S. organization, the Population Research Institute, claimed to have gathered evidence of UNFPA’s involvement in Chinese coercion. Although several investigations, including one sent by President George W. Bush himself, refuted this evidence, and UNFPA had used no U.S. funds in China, conservative political power was sufficient to cause President George W. Bush to eliminate all U.S. funding for UNFPA’s activities everywhere in the world. Ironically, this period was exactly when the UNFPA project had shown that coercion was unnecessary. China eventually followed the UNFPA’s lead, liberalizing and eventually ending the OCP. Full article

The following article explores ideas of early ecological thinking within the natural sciences of early-19th-century Germany and discusses its possible roots. It tries to shed some light on the work of Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus who developed a holistic understanding of nature. The historical background and 18th-century ideas Treviranus relies on will be described—namely, the ‘great chain of being’, the idea of nature as a vast network of interconnected living beings and the question about the existence of vital forces that cause movement, growth or reproduction. Reference will especially be made to Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus’ main work, the six-volume Biologie oder Philosophie der lebenden Natur für Naturforscher und Aerzte (Biology or Philosophy of Living Nature for Natural Scientists and Physicians) published in Göttingen between 1802 and 1822 and the somewhat later synopsis Erscheinungen und Gesetze des organischen Lebens (Phenomena and Laws of Organic Life) printed in Bremen in 1831 and 1832. Full article

The two decades comprised within the partition of Vietnam and the end of the Indochina Wars surprisingly saw major advances in prehistoric archaeology in the region. This article examines the political context and implications of archaeological investigations conducted in Thailand and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under the guidance of, respectively, American and Soviet specialists, as an aspect of the cultural Cold War. Archaeological discoveries in both countries debunked colonial archaeology’s account of prehistoric Southeast Asia as a passive recipient of Chinese cultural influence by documenting autonomous technological development. The article argues that the new image of mainland Southeast Asia’ prehistory that formed by the early 1970s reflected the superpowers’ objective of empowering the region’s postcolonial nation-states notwithstanding their political contrasts, yet it was not equally congruent with the nationalist narratives of Thailand and North Vietnam. Full article

The Mawgridge’s case in 1707 set the precedent where adultery was recognised as a justified trigger for the husband’s killing of his wife’s lover; this crystallised a partial defence for provocation. However, in an 1810 case, the killing of the unfaithful wife followed a manslaughter conviction rather than murder for the first time. This study aims to investigate the shaping of a legally permissible violence, that is, the mitigation of the husband’s culpability in killing his adulterous wife. This provides the opportunity to question the (ir)rationality behind the judiciary’s discourse in the case of R v Clinton 2012; here, despite infidelity being abolished in 2009 in England and Wales as a defence for murder, the judges still insisted on its relevance in our culture and hence on legal culpability. The theoretical framework in this paper draws upon the scholarship of masculinity, the family, and the law. This paper discusses the contribution of the hegemonic male identity in creating this legal violence and fortifying social-hierarchical structure. Full article

Japan is often surrounded by the myth of featuring a unique “love for nature”, and its traditional culture and lifestyle as having been “in harmony with nature” before it was corrupted by modernization and Westernization. In this paper, I employ three examples to delineate images of nature in different times of Japanese history and point out the discrepancy between discourse on nature and physical engagement with nature. I argue that the environmental destruction that peaked in the Meiji period (1868–1912) is not primarily derived from a new, dualistic Euro-American understanding of nature. Rather, I demonstrate that environmental harm was already inherent in premodern Japan and was reconcilable with the respective concepts of nature. Therefore, industrialization and the adoption of Western technology solely released the potential for large-scale environmental impact. Full article

The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ hypothesis suggested that global politics would revert to inter-civilizational (inter-religious) conflict with the end of the Cold War. Conceptual and empirical refutations followed, but the idea that pre-Cold War inter-polity interaction was generally characterized by such conflict was not addressed. We consider this a possible historical libel. First, we briefly review the position of major faith traditions toward making and keeping agreements with those of other faith traditions. Most forms of agreements are sanctioned, and there is inconsistent and minimal support for duplicity. Second, using the MATRS database of multilateral treaties, we identify 79 sovereign entities active between 1750 and 1900 (when multilateral treaties were numerous and official state religions were prominent), link states to their official religions, and analyze the pattern of 385 multilateral treaties’ signings. We conclude that there is no tendency among states with one official religion to avoid entering into treaties with those of other official religions. The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ hypothesis is a historical myth. Full article

This paper draws on a late medieval example to show that images of nature can also be images of the human body. It presents the Anthropologium de hominis dignitate by the Leipzig magister Magnus Hundt (1449–1519). The Anthropologium is a text that prominently integrates the human body into its conception of man and its account of human dignity. The body is not presented as a prison of the soul, but as a perfectly balanced physical counterpart to the soul. The paper shows how Hundt’s reflections were influenced by his commitment to the Thomistic school. Moreover, it reveals how the elevated Imago Dei thesis provides a justification for the study of the human body. Hundt is shown to offer nothing less than a theological–philosophical legitimation for practising medicine. In doing so, he also incorporates images of nature in a literal sense, insofar as he includes images of the human body in his book. Full article

During most of the lifespan of the Venetian republic, doges (the name their presidents received) were elected for life. However, a long tenure was a rare event, which effectively resulted in term limits, as has already been reported by several authors. In this paper, we examine the length of these tenures and their evolution during the existence of the Venetian republic, following Smith et al.’s claim that specific events in Venetian history caused this shortening, but also the dates and possibly event or events that effectively caused that limitation by design. Finally, we will discuss the causes of this limitation and its effective consequences. Full article

The transformations that occurred in the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century, summarized by one author as more army, more taxes, more bureaucracy, and more state intrusion in the Ottoman provinces, radically changed provincial life in the Ottoman domains. Growing tax and manpower demands not only increased socio-economic pressure on the provinces but also redefined the sultan’s relationship with local authorities. Accompanied by the increasingly frequent stationing of the Janissary corps in the Ottoman provinces, especially in the seventeenth century, the Ottoman cities and towns saw new elite configurations and new types of power struggles and came under greater economic pressure. The rising number of registered Janissaries changed the internal dynamics of the towns, shaped local politics, and created new struggles for power in the cities where corps regiments were stationed, pushing the Janissaries into local politics, whether as rivals or allies of the local elite. As elsewhere, the southern Anatolian town of Adana witnessed such changes in its social structure, local politics, and relations with the imperial authority. Although similarities are to be seen with the eighteenth century provincial power struggles in the Anatolian and Arabian cities of Gaziantep and Aleppo in terms of intense factional strife and the active involvement of the Janissaries and their pretenders in local politics, the power struggle in Adana was between several Janissary officers, one of whom subsequently managed to become the urban notable (ayan) of the town. Full article

In his much-discussed work Beyond Nature and Culture, anthropologist Philippe Descola gives central importance to the “great divide” between nature and culture in European history. According to him, the “naturalism” created by this gap is at the heart of Western modernity and distinguishes it from the “others” on the planet. One can certainly agree with Descola that the nature-culture dualism cannot claim universal validity. However, the extent of the “great divide” created in Europe by early modern “rationalist” scholarship remains unclear. Methodologically, one should not limit oneself to the narrow history of science and philosophy, but also examine the linguistic, religious, and social history. Full article

The history of scientific publishing has been one of the most topical research subjects in the history of science during the last few decades. It has furthered scholarly communication with other disciplines, such as book history, the history of education and communication studies. It has contributed to the development of new conceptual and methodological tools for the study of the material culture of print, the replication of scientific knowledge in various media and the social appropriation of knowledge through reading. This field of research offers exemplary results on sources such as journals, encyclopedias and textbooks, and on configurations such as disciplines, specialization and the practices associated with our contemporary knowledge system and communication environment, which cut across academic departments. Full article