Scrutinizing the main activities of the Sociedad Astronómica de Barcelona , a scientific society that was founded in 1910 and lasted until 1921, this paper analyses how and why its members disseminated astronomy to society at large. Inspired by Camille Flammarion , and with a strong amateur character, the programme of the SAB raised interest among academic scientists, politicians, priests, navy officers, educated audiences, and positivist anticlerical writers. It rapidly conquered the public sphere through well-attended lectures, exhibitions, observations, and publications. (...) In the context of an industrial city, which at that time was suffering serious social tensions, the popularization of astronomy transcended social and cultural boundaries. It created common ground between expert and lay knowledge, science and art, the ‘natural’ and the ‘social’, and between science and religion. In addition, it was considered as one of the only possible ways to raise the scientific level of a country such as Spain, which at that time perceived itself as peripheral, even backward, in terms of mainstream innovations in science and technology. (shrink)
From 17 to 22 October 1955, Madrid hosted the UNESCO Festival of Science. In the early years of the Cold War, in a dictatorial country that had recently been admitted into the international community, the festival aimed to spread science to the public through displays of scientific instruments, public lectures, book exhibitions, science writers professional associations, and debates about the use of different media. In this context, foreign visitors, many of whom came from liberal democracies, seemed comfortable in the capital (...) of a country ruled by a dictatorship that had survived after the defeat of fascism in the Second World War and was struggling to gain foreign recognition after years of isolation. This article analyzes the political role of science popularization in Madrid at that time. It approaches the apparently puzzling marriage between UNESCO’s international agenda for peace and democracy and the interests of the Francoist elites. Shared views of technocratic modernity, the fight against communism, and a diplomacy that served Spanish nationalism, paved the way for the alliance. (shrink)
The life and works of John Mercer , a calico-printer from Lancashire, is a good example to illustrate the complexity of the process of printing cottons with natural colours, and the different skills required to obtain a final product able to be sold in the markets in the early years of the nineteenth century. A subtle combination of entrepreneurial dynamism, chemical knowledge, and expertise in the workshop provided a very special sort of ‘artisan-chemist’, who played a key role in the (...) industrial prosperity of the coloured textiles in the early Victorian years. The paper tries to show how, apart from the traditional ‘great luminaries’ of the period , self-educated provincial chemists such as Mercer also made significant practical and theoretical contributions. (shrink)
Stepping-up the historiography of peripheral popularisation Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9454-8 Authors Aileen Fyfe, School of History, University of St Andrews, St Katharine’s Lodge, The Scores, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AR UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.
El sistema filosófico de Spinoza no puede ser considerado en rigor como panteísta, sino panenteísta. Este artículo intenta reforzar esta tesis analizando los conceptos de Natura naturans y Natura naturata, a veces confundidos en la obra de Spinoza. Se establece además una comparación de ambos conceptos en Spinoza y en David Nieto, autor de una obra titulada De la divina providencia, o sea naturaleza universal o natura naturante, al tiempo que se señalan las diferencias entre las concepciones inmanentes de (...) la divinidad de ambos autores. (shrink)
Ethical banking, microfinance institutions or certain credit cooperatives, among others, grant socially responsible loans. This paper presents a credit score system for them. The model evaluates social and financial aspects of the borrower. The financial aspects are evaluated under the conventional banking framework, by analysing accounting statements and financial projections. The social aspects try to quantify the loan impact on the achievement of Millennium Development Goals such as employment, education, environment, health or community impact. The social credit score model should (...) incorporate the lender’s know-how and should also be coherent with its mission. This is done using Multi-Criteria Decision Making. The paper illustrates a real case: a loan application by a social entrepreneur presented to a socially responsible lender. The decision support system not only produces a score, but also reveals strengths and weaknesses of the application. (shrink)
This study examines the impact that research and development (R&D) intensity has on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We base our research on the resource-based view (RBV) theory, which contributes to our analysis of R&D intensity and CSR because this perspective explicitly recognizes the importance of intangible resources. Both R&D and CSR activities can create assets that provide firms with competitive advantage. Furthermore, the employment of such activities can improve the welfare of the community and satisfy stakeholder expectations, which might vary (...) according to their prevailing environment. As expressions of CSR and R&D vary throughout industries, we extend our research by analysing the impact that R&D intensity has on CSR across both manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries. Our results show that R&D intensity positively affects CSR and that this relationship is significant in manufacturing industries, while a non-significant result was obtained in non-manufacturing industries. (shrink)
A lo largo de este artículo se va a tratar de analizar la concepción del Romanticismo propuesta por Flaubert. En ella, a raíz del viaje a Oriente entre 1849 y 1851, se produce un cambio que hace constituir a la tarea del literato, artista o filósofo romántico en una tarea en la que la cuestión fundamental de la Estética y del Arte debe mezclarse con la tarea Ética y de pensamiento de la Política para la sociedad del futuro. .
RESUMENLa analogía de Ortega del actor arrojado a un escenario no supone, como se ha sugerido en distintos trabajos, la inclusión de su metafísica en el entorno del tópico que entiende el mundo como un teatro. La identificación del individuo con un actor que debe transformarse en el personaje que perfila su vocación implica una concepción de mi vida, entendida como creación propia, opuesta a la del theatrum mundi, donde al actor le es asignado un papel ya escrito que debe (...) representar dócilmente. Con todo, su definición del actor como metáfora corporizada converge –o puede llegar a converger- con su noción metafísica del hombre como existencial metáfora. Aunque Ortega no es explícito en este punto.PALABRAS CLAVE«IDEA DEL TEATRO», THEATRUM MUNDI, VOCACIÓN, RES DRAMÁTICA, METÁ- FORA CORPORIZADAABSTRACTOrtega’s analogy of the actor who is thrown into a scenario does not imply the inclusion of his metaphysics in the literary topic that understands the world as a theatre. Ortega identifies the person as an actor who must become the character that his vocation writes. This implies a conception of «my life», understood as my creation, which is contrary to the Theatrum Mundi’s, in which the actor is assigned a previously written role. However his definition of the actor as embodied metaphor could converge with its metaphysical notion of man as an existential metaphor. Ortega is not explicit on this point, though.KEYWORDS«THE IDEA OF THEATRE», THEATRUM MUNDI, VOCATION, RES DRAMATICA, EMBODIED METAPHOR. (shrink)
RESUMENLa estructura desdoblada que adopta habitualmente la escritura de Chantal Maillard tiene un sentido intenso en el poemario Hilos. Este libro, que en parte surge como segregación del diario Husos, despliega una lógica estética contraria a toda interpretación metafísica. Para ello, los poemas crecen como ecos unos de otros y como reflejos de fragmentos de otros libros de la autora. En Hilos, la escritura teje una malla o red cuyos vórtices dibujan el mapa de un Texto en que obras de (...) otras manifestaciones artísticas, filosóficas o mitológicas vienen a explicar su urdimbre.PALABRAS CLAVECHANTAL MAILLARD, ESTÉTICA, GEGO, DERRIDA, KĀLĪABSTRACTThe split structure in which Chantal Maillard’s writing are regularly framed, has an intense sense in the poems in Hilos. This book, which comes as a segregation of the diary Husos, displays an aesthetic logic opposed to metaphysics. The poems are written as echoes and as reflections of other fragments of other Maillard’s books. In Hilos, the writing is a mesh or a network whose vortices draw the map of a Text explained by other artistic works, philosophical works or mythological expressions.KEY WORDSCHANTAL MAILLARD, AESTHETICS, GEGO, DERRIDA, KĀLĪ. (shrink)
Differences in Common engages in the ongoing debate on ‘community’ focusing on its philosophical and political aspects through a gendered perspective. It explores the subversive and enriching potential of the concept of community, as seen from the perspective of heterogeneity and distance, and not from homogeneity and fused adhesions. This theoretical reflection is, in most of the essays included here, based on the analysis of literary and filmic texts, which, due to their irreducible singularity, teach us to think without being (...) tied, or needing to resort, to commonplaces. Philosophers such as Arendt, Blanchot, Foucault, Agamben or Derrida have made seminal reflections on community, often inspired by contemporary historical events and sometimes questioning the term itself. More recently, thinkers like Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak or Rada Ivekovic—included in this volume are essays by all three—have emphasized the gender bias in the debate, also problematizing the notion of community. Most of the essays gathered in Differences in Common conceive community not as the affirmation of several properties which would unite us to other similar individuals, but as the “expropriation” of ourselves (Esposito), in an intimate diaspora. Community does not fill the gap between subjects but places itself in this gap or void. This conception stresses the subject’s vulnerability, a topic which is also central to this volume. The body of community is thus opened by a “wound” (Cixous) which exposes us to the contagion of otherness. The essays collected here reflect on different topics related to these issues, such as: gender and nation; nationalism, internationalism, transnationalism; nationalism’s naturalization of citizenship and the exclusion of women from citizenship; the violent consequences of a gendered nation on women’s bodies; gendering community; preservation of difference(s) within the community; bodily vulnerability and new politics; community and mourning; community and the politics of memory; fiction, historical truth and (fake) documentary; love, relationality and community; interpretive communities and virtual communities on the Web, among others. Joana Sabadell-Nieto is Professor of Contemporary Spanish Literature (Gender and Feminist Studies) at Hamilton College (USA) and Researcher at the Center for Women and Literature at the University of Barcelona. Marta Segarra is Professor of French and Francophone literature and Gender Studies at the University of Barcelona (Spain), Director of the UNESCO Chair Women, Development and Cultures and co-founder and director of the Center for Women and Literature (2003-2012). (shrink)
The article analyzes the definitions of the personnel motivation known in the literature. It also shows that all the definitions describe the personnel motivation as a continual and permanent process of forming and providing the incentives from the enterprise to its employees. This process is aimed to promote the employees to complete the tasks of the company. The questioning method was used to study the motivation factors of the employees of different ages at the certain enterprise. The necessity of consideration (...) of the age factor for improving the motivation system of the personnel at the enterprise was explained. The defects of the existing system at the enterprise were formulated. The recommendations for managers were made as follows: 1) to identify the goals of the company and to inform the employees about them; 2) to develop a system of key performance indicators of the efficiency of the company and to use them to measure the results of the activity of the enterprises, departments and each participant of the work process; 3) to use scientific methods to monitor the situation with the personnel at the enterprise; 4) to improve the reward system; 5) to have the wage and labor correlation criteria. (shrink)
Este ensayo trata de un tema esencial en el surgimiento de la conciencia moderna: la cuestión litigiosa entre la libertad y la gracia, en «La controversia entre Erasmo y Lutero acerca del libre albedrío», —asunto poco estudiado pese a su alcance en la historia de las ideas religiosas y morales—. Analiza con detalle la tensión entre el humanismo moderno y la religión reformada, y la desarrolla en los diversos planos implicados en la misma: en la metafísica, el conflicto entre predestinación (...) y libertad; en teología, la relación entre razón y fe, en antropología, la oposición entre la carne y el espíritu, y en moral, el problema del mal y la liberación de la servidumbre. Sostiene, además, como conclusión, que la recta comprensión de esta controversia y su superación constituye la médula del humanismo cristiano, tal como se acuñó en el Renacimiento. (shrink)
The Ibero-American Conference is a forum for dialogue, consultation and cooperation in which the observance of human rights is an essential principle. These rights are an area of action of the Ibero-American system. The instruments adopted by the Conference and other Ibero-American instances provide political and legal indications in the field of human rights that must be developed through initiatives, actions, programmes and agendas of cooperation. Social rights deserve special attention at the Ibero-American Summits. All this should have an influence (...) on the positions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, particularly when it deals with cases in which are affected economic, social and cultural rights, as it has been done in the wake of recent judgments on the matter. The work of the Ibero-American system in the fields of migration and culture will be of particular interest to the Inter-American Court in determining the content and scope of the rights recognized and protected in the inter-American system. (shrink)
This project presents a comparative philosophical approach to understanding key elements in the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard by juxtaposing his works with the philosophy and theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church.. The primary aim of the project is to look at three key areas of Kierkegaard’s philosophy that have been either underrepresented or misunderstood in the literature. These three areas are: Kierkegaard’s views on sin and salvation, Kierkegaard’s epistemology, and Kierkegaard’s philosophy of personhood. The dissertation ends with an epilogue that (...) briefly explores a further area where this comparative approach might provide fruitful results, namely Kierkegaard’s views on collective worship. I argue that the revolutionary nature of Kierkegaard’s break with prevalent views in the Western Christian traditions have not always been fully appreciated due to the fact that he is most often read through the lens of either Western Christianity or the Western philosophical traditions that he came to influence. Viewing Kierkegaard in light of the Eastern Christian tradition offers a new interpretive lens that highlights the extent to which Kierkegaard aimed to break free from standard Western accounts of sin and salvation, knowledge of God, and human personhood. (shrink)
