Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Bettina Varwig
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Johann Sebastian Bach ◽  
Island Territory

As they step into the same rivers, other and still other waters flow upon them. —Heraclitus Watery metaphors prove irresistible as I reflect on the central subject matter of this volume—Bach. The streams of prose about Johann Sebastian Bach that have emanated from the pens of myriad writers since the eighteenth century have to date coalesced in a sea of Bach scholarship that appears to be ever rising (over 73,000 titles are available in the online “Bach-Bibliographie” maintained by the Bach-Archiv Leipzig), but whose shorelines as yet remain quite firmly delineated. Or, to turn the metaphor around, Bach scholarship on the whole can still seem like a well-fortified island in an ocean of musicological and wider humanities/social sciences discourse that laps up against its shores without any serious risk of getting its inhabitants’ feet too wet. For this island territory, thankfully, existential threats in the form of floods or tsunamis remain a fairly distant prospect. A number of prestigious publication series with those iconic four letters in the title, from the ...

Reflections

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-576
Author(s):  
Laura Engel
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
History Of ◽  
Visual History ◽  
Contemporary Artists

Contemporary artists Elizabeth Colomba and Fabiola Jean-Louis employ eighteenth-century subject matter, iconography, and media to reimagine the visual history of Black women. Putting Colomba’s and Jean-Louis’s work in dialogue with my own, I return to the premises of my book Women, Performance, and the Material of Memory: The Archival Tourist (2019), to re-examine, interrogate, and acknowledge my position as a white scholar.

Science and common sense in the study of international politics

1984 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-39
Author(s):  
Roger D. Spegele
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Humean View

The history of recent efforts to establish a science of international politics may be usefully viewed as elaborate glosses on David Hume's powerful philosophical programme for resolving, reconciling or dissolving a variety of perspicuous dualities: the external and the internal, mind and body, reason and experience. Philosophers and historians of ideas still dispute the extent to which Hume succeeded but if one is to judge by the two leading ‘scientific’ research programmes1 for international politics—inductivism and naive falsificationism —these dualities are as unresolved as ever, with fatal consequences for the thesis of the unity of the sciences. For the failure to reconcile or otherwise dissolve such divisions shows that, on the Humean view, there is at least one difference between the physical (or natural) sciences. and the moral (or social) sciences: namely, that while the latter bear on the internal and external, the former are concerned primarily with the external. How much this difference matters and how the issue is avoided by the proponents of inductivism and naïve falsification is the subject matter of this paper.

scholarly journals Hva gjør museologi?

1970 ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Brita Brenna
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Phd Theses ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
And Performance

A turn towards practice and performance has been an important feature of the humanities and social sciences during the last decade. In this article, it will be argued that looking into the practice of museology is important for answering what museology is and evaluating what it can be used for. A visit will be paid to the various names given to museum-related studies, before giving an account of how three fairly recent Nordic PhD theses approach their subject matter. All three of them, it will be argued, can inspire museum practices. However, they are also highly important studies that not only speak to museological concerns, but also address questions that are of relevance for understanding wider cultural and societal changes.

Condorget: Politics and Reason

1978 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 110-139
Author(s):  
Ian White
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Mathematical Treatment ◽  
Political Sciences ◽  
Fundamental Significance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mathematical Discipline ◽  
The Common ◽  
Universal Applicability

From the time of its clearest origins with Pascal, the theory of probabilities seemed to offer means by which the study of human affairs might be reduced to the same kind of mathematical discipline that was already being achieved in the study of nature. Condorcet is to a great extent merely representative of the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who were led on by the prospect of developing moral and political sciences on the pattern of the natural sciences, specifically physics. The development of economics and the social sciences, from the eighteenth century onwards, may be said in part to have fulfilled and in a manner to have perpetuated these ambitions. In so far as the new sciences have been susceptible of mathematical treatment, this has not been confined to the calculus of probabilities. But there is a temptation at every stage to ascribe fundamental significance and universal applicability to each latest mathematical device that is strikingly useful or illuminating on its first introduction. It is the theory of games that enjoys this position at present, and shapes the common contemporary conception of the very same problems that preoccupied Condorcet.

What, If Anything, is the Philosophy of Political Science?

2020 ◽  
pp. 004839312097682
Author(s):  
Gianluca Pozzoni
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Philosophy Of Social Science ◽  
Special Sciences ◽  
Definition Of

Compared to other philosophies of special sciences, the scope, object, and definition of the philosophy of political science remain vague. This article traces this vagueness to the changing subject matter of political science throughout its history, but argues that all social sciences are subject to radical changes in what count as their defining characteristics. Accordingly, the only legitimate definition of “philosophy of political science” is “the philosophical study of whatever happens to conventionally fall within the scope of political science at a given moment.” Moving from this assumption, this article makes the case for a unified philosophy of social science.

Islamophobia Reconsidered: Approaching Emotions, Affects, and Historical Layers of Orientalism in the Study of Religion

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenz Trein
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Rational Behavior ◽  
Theory Of Practice ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Affective Dimensions

1The article challenges the unexplained subject matter of emotions and affects in the study of Islamophobia. As a first step, I will pinpoint how scholars in the field of political and social sciences construe affective dimensions of Islamophobia as irrational in opposition to rational behavior and interest in politics and thereby virtually exclude emotions and affects as suitable subjects from scholarly discourse. In contrast, I will suggest analyzing Islamophobic discourse in line with approaches defining affects and emotions both as historically and linguistically mediated. Therefore, particular attention is given to a historiographical approach to emotions with regard to a theory of practice and to the so-called ‘affective turn’ in the field of religion. Furthermore, I am arguing that a distinct historiographical stance towards Islamophobia and emotions in the study of religion allows us to readdress historical (e.g., colonial, Orientalist, and postcolonial) layers structuring debates on Islam until today.

Introduction. Theories of Myth

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Segal
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
The Social ◽  
Origin Function ◽  
Modern Era

The ‘Introduction’ examines and compares modern theories of myth by applying them to the famous myth of Adonis. It is only in the modern era—specifically, only since the second half of the nineteenth century—that these theories have purported to be scientific, for only since then have there existed the social sciences. Of these, anthropology, psychology, and sociology have contributed the most to the study of myth. Each discipline harbours multiple theories of myth, but what unites them is the questions asked: those of origin, function, and subject matter. Is myth universal? Is myth true? Along with these other questions, it defines myth as a story.

The Disaster Artist of the long eighteenth century

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
D. J. Moores
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
The Body ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Eighteenth Century Literature ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Century Literature

This essay is a discussion of three anonymous novels about happiness from the long eighteenth century – The Vale of Felicity (1791), Benignity (1818) and Edward (1820) – all of which seem to be written by the same author, as they exhibit striking similarities not only in subject matter but also in their aristocratic perspective on happiness, one wholly dependent upon pecuniary means. What is more, they exhibit the same artistic deficiencies, particularly in wooden characters and the rather poor handling of pacing, plotting, obtrusive didacticism and complication. The opening discussion situates the novels in the context of the abundant eighteenth-century literature on happiness, while the body of the essay is a critical analysis of the three narratives in terms of their various genres (epistolary, sentimental, didactic, Bildungsroman, circular journey, identikit, picaresque) and eighteenth-century ideas on Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Christian charity. The peroration and conclusion are a reflection upon the notion of happiness itself and how it has been ill-received in literary studies. The essay represents the first analysis of its kind, since there is no extant, substantial criticism on any of these novels.

On the Origins of the Sonate auf Concertenart

1993 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne R. Swack
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Special Property ◽  
Johann Sebastian Bach

This article traces the development of the Sonate auf Concertenart-a type of sonata that imitates the Vivaldian concerto in at least one of its movements-in Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century. While such sonatas had been considered to be the special property of Johann Sebastian Bach, the article shows that such works of Vivaldi were performed at the Dresden court; that composers from Dresden and its environs especially cultivated the genre at the time that Bach wrote his sonatas; and that such works, as well as Vivaldi's concertos, probably served as Bach's models.

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