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Fourier was born 250 years ago, twenty-one years before the French Revolution in 1789. The events of those troubled times turned his life into an adventure novel: the Revolution with its mortal dangers; Bonaparte's expedition to E...
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Fourier was born 250 years ago, twenty-one years before the French Revolution in 1789. The events of those troubled times turned his life into an adventure novel: the Revolution with its mortal dangers; Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt with its discoveries; later a political career as prefect of Isère at Grenoble, where Fourier wrote the first versions of the Théorie analytique de la chaleur, when he was not busy with the construction of the road from Grenoble to Turin or the drainage of marshland at Bourgoin; and finally, his academic role at the very heart of the Parisian scientific community during the years 1820-1830. While relating a variety of aspects which are not all of scientific concern, we shall, of course, dedicate an important space to the theory of heat, Fourier's major work, as well as to the Fourier series, which are a crucial element of his mathematics.
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At the end of the eighteenth century, England and France both underwent revolutions: France the French Revolution, England the industrial revolution. This note sheds new light on these contrasting experiences in the histories of E...
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At the end of the eighteenth century, England and France both underwent revolutions: France the French Revolution, England the industrial revolution. This note sheds new light on these contrasting experiences in the histories of England and France by looking at the evolution of real consumer prices in London and Paris in the centuries leading up to 1800. Whilst in London, building workers were facing low and stable consumer prices over the period, leaving plenty of scope for a demand-driven consumer revolution (in particular after 1650), their Parisian counterparts had to engage in a year-long grind to maintain a decent living, and often had to cut consumption to make ends meet. The exercise conducted in the present paper gives a quantitative and economic underpinning to the notion that the French revolution did not arise out of nowhere, but rather had its roots in centuries of hardship amongst working class people as they struggled to make a living.
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Critical responses by Marwala and Ntlatlapa challenged Moll’s refutation of a contemporary technological revolution as a necessary but not sufficient stratum of a Fourth Industrial Revolution (S Afr J Sci. 2023;119(1/2)). This re...
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Critical responses by Marwala and Ntlatlapa challenged Moll’s refutation of a contemporary technological revolution as a necessary but not sufficient stratum of a Fourth Industrial Revolution (S Afr J Sci. 2023;119(1/2)). This rejoinder suggests that they work with loose criteria about what counts as a ‘revolution’, and therefore confuse the character of industrial, scientific and technological revolutions. Therefore, their defence of the existence of a new, contemporary technological revolution, and a related economic, social and geopolitical revolution, rests on shaky conceptual ground. Neither the pandemic nor an unprecedented fusion of technologies has produced a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’.
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The Green Revolution was a mid-20th century decades-long international science and educational effort to provide food security to hundreds of millions. This was accomplished in developing countries through increased crop productio...
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The Green Revolution was a mid-20th century decades-long international science and educational effort to provide food security to hundreds of millions. This was accomplished in developing countries through increased crop production and graduate-level education and training on site. Many of the early leaders of the effort received their graduate education at the University of Minnesota. Professor Elvin C. Stakman of the Department of Plant Pathology was their teacher, intellectual leader, mentor, and friend. The best known of these Minnesota graduates was Norman E. Borlaug (BS 1936, MS 1941, PhD 1942), who in 1970 received the Nobel Peace Prize for his role of producing “miracle semi dwarf wheats.” These widely adapted, high-yielding, disease-resistant wheats were the vanguard of the effort to end world hunger. Because this revolution in food production involved improving green, chlorophyll-containing crop plants it was termed the “Green Revolution.” (Chlorophyll is the green pigment in plant leaves that traps solar energy and allows plants to fix atmospheric carbon into edible carbohydrates.)
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Moll, Marwala, and Ntlatlapa highlight salient criticisms of terminologies and definitional uncertainties associated with the term ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (4IR). Scientific research on technological change seems to sugges...
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Moll, Marwala, and Ntlatlapa highlight salient criticisms of terminologies and definitional uncertainties associated with the term ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (4IR). Scientific research on technological change seems to suggest a need for theoretical synthesis to address a failure of 4IR notions to consider the central role of a revolution in the scientific/knowledge creation process itself – that is seemingly a causal driver of current technological and societal changes. The term ‘Fifth Industrial Revolution’ might helpfully be used to differentiate 4IR debates from those deriving from revolutionary changes in science itself that may underlie our current trajectory of technological change.
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Sigrid Schmalzer’s fascinating new book, Red Revolution, Green Revolution, provides a rare account of the philosophy, the achievements, and the actors of an agricultural transformation. This development, which occurred in China d...
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Sigrid Schmalzer’s fascinating new book, Red Revolution, Green Revolution, provides a rare account of the philosophy, the achievements, and the actors of an agricultural transformation. This development, which occurred in China during the 1960s and 1970s, often has been referred to as China’s Green Revolution; however, as Schmalzer shows, “scientific farming” (科学种田), as the campaign was officially named, was distinctly different from the purely technocratic approaches that were applied in countries supported by Western development aid.
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Several concepts pertaining to the dramatic changes that occurred during the Cambrian have been proposed, namely the Agronomic Revolution (AR), the Cambrian Substrate Revolution (CSR) and the Cambrian Information Revolution (CIR)....
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Several concepts pertaining to the dramatic changes that occurred during the Cambrian have been proposed, namely the Agronomic Revolution (AR), the Cambrian Substrate Revolution (CSR) and the Cambrian Information Revolution (CIR). The original concept of the AR refers to the replacement of Precambrian-type substrates ("matgrounds") by Phanerozoic-type ones ("mixgrounds"). The CSR highlights the evolutionary and ecological effects of Cambrian substrate changes on epifaunal sessile metazoans. The CIR involves the distribution of signals in an environment that an organism can potentially respond to, underscoring an increased complexity and heterogeneity of marine ecosystems, which may have played a major role as a driving force of further evolutionary change during the Cambrian. A systematic review of the Ediacaran-Cambrian ichnofossil record allows to provide some temporal resolution for these Cambrian revolutions and to explore the synergies among these evolutionary breakthroughs and possible geobiological outcomes. The AR is not coincident with the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary, but rather it is manifested by Cambrian Age 2. Because the CSR focuses on the response of the epifauna to newly evolved mixgrounds and the late Cambrian appearance of hardgrounds, it may be understood, at least in part, as a consequence of the AR. In contrast, the CIR involved the appearance of sophisticated, innovative feeding strategies that allowed benthic organisms to successfully exploit resources in an increasingly more heterogeneous sea bottom. The occurrence in the Fortunian of highly patterned grazing trails reflects the establishment of efficient navigational devices. Although the CIR signals the appearance of novel body plans and novel ways of animal-substrate interactions, strategies involving matground exploitation were still widespread in the Fortunian. More dramatic changes took place in Cambrian Age 2, as revealed by the onset of the AR and later the effects on epifaunal sessile organisms and communities during the CSR, signalling to the transition to shallow-marine ecosystems of modern aspect.
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Based on a literature review, this article identifies and assesses measurement approaches for two different purposes: determining the value of BI and managing the BI process within an organization.
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A review of Josh Moufawad-Paul's recent book, Continuity and Rupture. Through which I present the poltical salience of this piece as a means of clarifying the terrain of revolutionary politics in terms of the reimergence of prolet...
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A review of Josh Moufawad-Paul's recent book, Continuity and Rupture. Through which I present the poltical salience of this piece as a means of clarifying the terrain of revolutionary politics in terms of the reimergence of proletarian politics, the development of opportunistic critiques of Leninism and Maoism, and the necessity to reassert a scientific understanding of revolution.
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