Search

The paper aims at outlining the conceptual frame in which nineteenth-century German philosophy inherits and pursues the British debate on induction. It investigates this debate as a case study for a broader inquiry about the German reception of late British empiricism. The Mill-Whewell controversy on induction is central to the late British empiricism's project of a logic of natural sciences. It becomes significant in Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century, as a means of defining a theory of science that supports the rising anti-idealist endeavour. The paper first defines what is at stake in the Mill-Whewell controversy, then considers how the same issue is handled in Apelt's Die theorie der Induction (1854) and in Sigwart's Logik (1873-1878). It concludes that, within the German context, the understanding of this issue cannot be disconnected from a Kantian focus on the transcendental foundation of scientific knowledge, and that this characteristic perspective on induction also implies some innovative developments for induction as a scientific method, mainly concerning the relevance and use of probability and statistics in inductive methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some historical queries on the relationship between archaeology and politics. The methodological and scientific outlines of the works of the most prominent archaeologists (1930-1970) are embedded within a specific social milieu; reflecting on this aspect means showing how cultural policies and institutional pressure can influence hermeneutics and methodological debates (i.e. the biases of scientific research). In this sense, when talking about 1950’s Germany and Italy, the importance of publishing houses, as one of the main divulge tools of political parties, becomes indicative of an organized program reflecting and promoting specific cultural and political values. Furthermore, the relationships between archaeologists and publishers can reveal how political intents have conditioned and still condition the transmission of texts, ideas and authors. What I am interrogating is thus the bridge between Academia and the broad public, emphasizing its ideological components. From a methodological point of view, I do not intend to represent a schematization of all occurrences of the relations between archaeologists, political institutions and publicists, but rather I would like to propose an introduction to a new line of research, that will necessarily need to provide for a broader casuistry. The comparative perspective between Italy and Germany is motivated by a desire to denationalize the history of studies and reconstruct a transnational cultural history, with similarities/differences of countries involved in similar extreme caesuras, characterizing the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of INTRECCI d'Arte is the property of Universita di Bologna, Dipartimento delle Arti visive, performative e mediali, Alma Mater Studiorum and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Thiasos is the property of Edizioni Quasar di Severino Tognon s.r.l. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mediterranea - Ricerche Storiche is the property of Mediterranea-Ricerche Storiche and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper takes into consideration Elena Alessiato's volume Lo spirito e la maschera. La ricezione politica di Fichte in Germania al tempo della prima guerra mondiale (2018). This political reception of Fichte's thought has two main interpretations: an interpretation in a national and conservative sense, and a socialist interpretation. The former underlines the image of Fichte as the philosopher and educator of Germany. The latter sees in Fichte's thought an anticipation of socialist theories, in particular as regards the relationship between economics and politics. In a situation of spiritual and political crisis, Fichte's "philosophy of man" offers a solid point of reference and a significant impulse, thanks to the moral faith in the ideal, which stands at the center of the German philosopher's moral and political vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The portrait of Goethe proposed in the novel «Lotte in Weimar», written by Mann in the years of his exile 1936-1939, is full of political traits. Someone spoke also of a "distortion" of Goethe, in an anti-Nazi but even anti-German sense. Nevertheless, those political traits are very trustworthy, especially with regard to Goethe's opposition against the Romantic nationalism of the post-Napoleonic time. The paper addresses these issues considering the parallelism between Goethe's position in the controversy about Greek mythology (arisen between Hermann and Creuzer in 1817), and Mann's position about the resuscitation of Bachofen endorsed by Alfred Baeumler in 1926. In this light, the poetic and ethical identification of Mann with Goethe exhibits some mimetic as well as ironical aspects. Even Mann's "parody" of Goethe expresses a political significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literary studies on the simulacrum generally adopt a thematic perspective aimed at examining the presence of simulacra in specific genres, authors or literary traditions. This contribution proposes a less common approach by investigating those cases in which literature itself acquires a simulacral nature, rather than being a means of representation of simulacra. After a brief historical recognition of the aesthetic of automation, the research focuses on stochastic and algorithmic poetry produced in Germany since the second half of the 20th century. The analysis of computer-generated poems offers the opportunity to reflect upon theoretical and aesthetical matters concerning e.g. the concept of authorship, the referentiality of literary texts, the role of creativity in art as well as the mechanical component involved in every act of artistic creation. In this context, the present contribution shows how the discussion on this form of “artificial poetry” (Max Bense) can contribute to the debate about posthumanism from a purely aesthetic point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Chronica Mundi is the property of Chronica Mundi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims at answering the following questions: which dimensions best describe governments' decision-making potential in parliamentary democracies? How Italy (1979-2008), Germany (1976-2009), Great Britain (1979-2010) and Spain (1982-2008) can be categorized in terms of such dimensions? I try to achieve these aims by proposing a complex, multidimensional index combining the most important sources of governments' decision-making potential., namely: the ideological cohesion of the executive (the most important feature); the «colour» of the government compared with the previous one (alternation in office); the number of partisan veto-players; the institutional context i.e. the relationship between government and parliament; the size of parliamentary majority (the least important feature). This index fits quite well with qualitative literature on comparative governmental systems, and seems a reliable tool that scholars could use when studying the decision-making potential of parliamentary governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the crucial relation between culture, history and politics. The author starts with an analysis of Hans Ulrich Wehler's Gesellschaftsgeschichte and Walter Benjamin's famous article «Edward Fuchs, Collector and Historian». It focuses in particular on Wehler's concept of society and his theory of social history and Benjamin's use of «collective history». In a second part, the article deals with the contemporary German debate on memory and remembrance and the guiding difference between history and cultural studies, society and community. Above all, the author argues that the question of method is a political one. The paper pursues a more ambitious objective, which is to determine the theoretical and therefore political statutes of collective memory in times of contingency.

Immigration has introduced serious conflicts into European urban areas. The nature of these conflicts varies according to many factors: the countries of origin of immigrants, their cultural and religious heritage, the social and economic problems in the hosting countries. But it is also necessary to take into account the political culture of these countries, i.e. the way in which State, people and nation are regarded and the relationships between ethnicity, nationality and citizenship are conceived. It is not by chance that France has adopted a policy of integration through cultural assimilation, the United Kingdom has practised a form of uneven pluralism emphasizing the role of ethnic communities and Germany has preferred a rotatory presence of «guest workers». Yet, all of these policies have failed owing to the important changes that have occurred both in the global context and in immigration itself. This paper analyzes what has happened in recent decades by taking into account the urban riots in England since the late '70s, the xenophobic attacks on immigrants in Germany after its reunification and the recurrent explosions in the French banlieues since the late '70s until the resounding events of November 2005. The last part concerns the case of Italy, which is still virtually unknown abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

«Internationalisation» and «Europeanisation» became key themes since the 1990s, both in higher education policy debates and in research on higher education. Higher education policy is still predominantly shaped at a national level; and as such, it still tends not only to reflect but to underscore the specific traditions and circumstances of individual countries. However, a number of different trends, many of which can be grouped together under the general heading of «internationalisation», have begun to challenge the predominance of the nation state as the main determinant of the character of universities and colleges. Internationalisation is contributing to, if not leading, a process of rethinking the social, cultural and economic roles of higher education and their configuration in national systems of higher education. This paper addresses the different impacts of internationalisation as a challenge to German higher education, it analyses the role of the European Union and the Bologna process, as well as the ice-breaker function of internationalisation for higher education reform in Germany. A closer look at the complex and dynamic multilevel set-up of internationalisation in European higher education reveals that it not only means varying border-crossing activities that are on the rise, but rather substantial changes towards systematic policies and a growing awareness of international cooperation and competition in a globalising higher education market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on diversification of communities of Italian immigrants in Germany. Topics discussed include immigrants' communities, inclusion strategy used in their diversification, overview of Italians in Germany, its sociological aspects and brief definition of social milieus.

Written in 1922, the present essay by Baeumler on the aesthetics of Croce belongs to the period of the German philosopher's thought culminating with Das Irrationalitätproblem in der Ästhetik und Logik des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zur Kritik der Urteilskraft (1923), in which he works on a systematic project about a "logic of individuality". This concept, which appears in the western world with the birth of modern aesthetics, when the notion of "judgment of taste" established itself in the third Critique by Kant, will find in Croce, during the twentieth century, one of the most attentive Philosophers to the problem it implies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the end of the 19th century to the present, six political regimes followed one another in Germany: from the monarchy to the Weimar Republic, the national socialist dictatorship, the occupation by the allies after the Second World War, East Germany under Soviet influence, the new established capitalist West Germany and the reunified Germany (the "Berlin Republic" after 1990). Nevertheless, surprisingly enough, the structure of the German welfare state has shown a steady continuity over such a long span of time: Germany is a very prominent example of "path dependency" in matter of welfare state. This direction is characterized by a corporative stance in social policy and it involves economic associations, Unions, private welfare organizations and mainstream Churches as leading actors of this process. The article discusses whether or not the influence of religion is a cause for the distinct features of the German welfare state. It briefly draws on current analysis and a research project in Münster (Germany); it investigates the historical and ideological roots of the typical German welfare model, and the role religion played in that respect. Finally, it focuses upon the German welfare-state model from 1945 to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia del Lavoro is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Fifty years after the event, Italy introduced legislation to compensate malformations in children - now in their sixties - born to mothers who had been prescribed the antiemetic drug thalidomide for morning sickness. However, compensation has been denied to people 'only' damaged in one half of their body as opposed to those with bilateral malformations. The present study reviews the papers describing case series of children born with 'thalidomide embryopathy' in the UK, Germany, and other countries around 1960. Most clinical series were not organized on the basis of inclusion/exclusion criteria, thus allowing for probable selection and information biases on maternal use of thalidomide. In any case, they included a sizable number of children with a unilateral limb defect born from mothers certainly exposed to thalidomide during the relevant pregnancy. In many of these children, limb defects were associated with visceral malformations, as frequently observed following exposure to thalidomide in utero. Similarly, later literature reviews were not bias-free in their choice of articles, as is the case of a recently proposed 'diagnostic algorithm' for thalidomide-caused specific malformations and of the advice by the Italian National Institute of Health ruling out the possibility of thalidomide producing unilateral limb defects. Overall, the scientific evidence suggests that thalidomide can cause unilateral limb defects.

This paper aims at illustrating the historical circumstances which led Julius Bernstein in 1902 to formulate a membrane theory on resting current in muscle and nerve fibers. It was a truly paradigm shift in research into bioelectrical phenomena, if qualified by the observation that, besides Bernstein, many other electrophysiologists between 1890 and 1902 borrowed ideas from the recent ionistic approach in the physical chemistry domain. But the Bernstein's subjective perception of that paradigm shift was that it constitued a mere re-interpretation of the so-called pre-existence theory advanced by his teacher Emil du Bois-Reymond in the first half of the 19 century.

The paper reports an association of limb-girdle muscular dystrophy and autonomous functioning thyroid nodule in two brothers and in one sister, a healthy carrier of this muscular dystrophy and with analogous thyroid pathology. It is interesting to outline the rarity of this association and the affinity of the clinical and electromyography pictures in thyrotoxic myopathy and in muscular dystrophy. In this three patients were studied: the muscular enzymes, electromyography and biopsy, HLA typing, thyroid scanning, thyroid hormone levels and TGA and TMA antibodies. However, the peculiarity of this case report may suggest the influence of genetic factors; moreover the existence of possible linkage between HLA system and association of two pathologies must be excluded, taking in account that the results of HLA types in these three Germans indicate different haplotypes.