This chapter examines some of the philosophical literature on idealizations in science and the epistemic challenges idealizations potentially pose for astrophysical methodology, particularly its use of computer simulations. We begin by surveying philosophical literature on idealization connected to (1) kinds of idealizations deployed in science, (2) the aims of idealization in science, and (3) various strategies for de-idealization. Using collisional ring galaxy simulations as a case study, we examine how these three themes play out in the context of astrophysical computer (...) simulations. Ultimately, we argue that deploying deidealization strategies is central to bolstering epistemic confidence in simulations in astrophysics. We conclude with some remarks on the role of idealization in the context of astrophysical computer simulations more generally. (shrink)

This article considers the concept of the utopia from the point of view of garden design. It begins with an evocation of the `Jardin de Julie', the literary garden described in Rousseau and acutely analysed by Louis Marin. It then passes to a series of actual gardens created by the French contemporary designer Bernard Lassus, in which the use of landscape effects is seen as achieving similar dislocations of space and incitements to the imagination.

Introduction : reinterpreting landscapes in an evolving world -- The pastoral tradition as inherited motives -- From classical pastorals to pastoral landscapes : rebirth of the landscape idea through analytical narration -- Instances of pastoral motivation in contemporary landscape analytical practice -- Articulating analytical narratives of contemporary pastoral landscapes -- The landscape analyst's pastoral action.

The Ozark Highlands’ karst topography of caves and hollows has provided refuge and escape for myriad peoples seeking to evade mainstream society throughout history, ranging from displaced Native Americans to counter-cultural back-to-the-landers. This ethnographic and ethnohistorical research moves beyond the popular misconception that the back-to-the-land movement merely represented an offshoot of the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and situates it within a deeper historical context. In this paper, I present the Arcadian evocations in various Ozark-related media and how (...) they relate to homesteading in the region, and demonstrate the shared agrarian values among diverse waves of agrarian Ozark homesteaders, recent and historical. (shrink)

In dit klassieke essay van de grote kunshistoricus Erwin Panfosky komt vast te staan dat het zinnetje ‘Et in Arcadia ego’, van oudsher te vinden op kunstwerken en in verhalen die Arcadië als thema hebben, tegenwoordig een andere betekenis krijgt dan vroeger. Waar wij het simpelweg vertalen als ‘Ook ik was in Arcadië’, een vertaling die past bij ons beeld van een idyllisch, pastoraal landschap, had het oorspronkelijk een veel minder onschuldige lading. Overtuigend toont Panofsky aan, door te verwijzen (...) naar onder meer Vergilius, Sannazaro en Guercino, dat de ‘ik’ die in het citaat spreekt niemand minder is dan de Dood. De juiste vertaling is dan het sinistere, moralistische ‘Ook in Arcadië heers ik, de Dood’: de Arcadiërs wordt gemaand hun sterven te gedenken. Panofsky maakt duidelijk dat de foutieve interpretatie, met alle gevolgen van dien voor het arcadisch thema, zijn oorsprong heeft bij Nicolas Poussins beroemde Et in Arcadia Ego-composities. Zijn essay maakt dat het lieflijke arcadische landschap alsnog zijn onschuld verliest, en dat ook voor ons de dood opnieuw tot Arcadië toetreedt. (shrink)

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those claims in their future contexts? How (...) will the consistent concerns of political theorists evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries from now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their rough equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What follows is one of the many confabulations published in response to these queries. Our earth is approaching its end. Through Project Arcadia our species has a chance at escape. In this paper, I want to argue that Arcadia is all things considered unjustifiable and unadvisable. It is unjustifiable because human beings have proven themselves incapable of stewarding sentient life on planet earth; for example, our collective response to climate change has been dire, handled almost exclusively through adaptation, committing vast areas of the world to desolation, desertification, or disappearance. Basic respect for life, and what we likely will make of some other instances of it, should counsel humility as we contemplate relocating ourselves to other life-supporting domains. It is inadvisable because our species, like the world, is impermanent. We will, at some point, have to contemplate the ceasing of our existence, and it is my argument that we contemplate this ceasing on the terra firm of our own planet. In conclusion, and drawing on the work of Samuel Scheffler and the Japanese concept of mono no aware, I will argue that there is considerable value, admittedly tainted with considerable melancholy, to be had in grasping the opportunity provided by planetary devastation to achieve some semblance of narrative completion. (shrink)

Two years ago, I was on a boat in the middle of the river that runs through Brisbane, Australia, with Sarah Winch, a medical ethicist at the University of Queensland. We were talking about the intersection of our professional work and our personal experiences of caregiving. Sarah's husband, Lincoln, had died at the age of forty‐eight, four months after a late‐stage diagnosis of kidney cancer. My friend Julia was the same age when she died, on November 18, 2010, after living (...) with breast cancer for seven years. Sarah asked me, “What was it like to write guidelines on end‐of‐life care while your best friend was dying?”. (shrink)

Le livre de Nicolas Bourguinat, analysant les écrits de femmes ayant voyagé en Italie entre 1770 et 1870, se situe à l’intersection de plusieurs champs de recherche, l’histoire des femmes, celles du voyage, du livre, de la littérature. Ces domaines d’études confluent dans une relecture originale de l’histoire de l’Europe dans une perspective transnationale. La recherche privilégie une période que l’auteur qualifie de « mal identifiée et mal aimée de l’histoire du voyage en Italie… à cheval en...

En la actualidad, aún se desconoce el verdadero alcance de la vasta cultura de Lope de Vega, pues, aunque se sabe que fue un gran lector, que legó más de 1500 libros, sus títulos se han perdido a lo largo de la historia. No obstante, en sus obras trasciende una serie de textos que contribuyeron a su formación. En el presente trabajo se analiza La Arcadia, considerada la novela pastoril más erudita del Siglo de Oro, desde la perspectiva de (...) los agentes terapéuticos. En esta obra se mencionan remedios de procedencia herbal, de procedencia mineral y también de procedencia animal. Los resultados confirman que Lope de Vega pudo utilizar una serie de textos científicos en sus citas sobre la materia terapéutica. Entre ellos cabe destacar a Andrés Laguna y su Dioscórides y Plinio el Viejo, cuya Historia Natural pudo haber consultado como fuente primaria, a través de alguna traducción comentada, como la de Gerónimo de Huerta o a través de alguna otra obra basada en ella, como el opúsculo de Constantino Castriota, pues, en este último caso, se encuentran párrafos muy similares y, en algunos casos, casi literales. Nowadays, the true extent of the vast culture of Lope de Vega is still largely unknown. Although it is known that he was a great reader, who bequeathed more than 1500 books, his titles have been lost throughout history. However, a series of texts that contributed to his education become known in his works. In the present paper, La Arcadia, considered the most erudite pastoral romance of Spanish Golden Age, is analyzed from the therapeutic perspective. Remedies of herbal origin, of mineral origin and also of animal origin are mentioned in this novel. The results achieved confirm that Lope de Vega was able to use a series of scientific texts in his quotations on the therapeutic subject. Among them, it is worth mentioning Andres Laguna, and Pliny the Elder, whose Natural History could have been consulted as a primary source, through some commented translation, such as that of Geronimo de Huerta, or through some other work based on it, like Constantino Castriota's opuscule. In the latter case, there are very similar and, in some cases, almost literal paragraphs. (shrink)

Through the use of some purposeful anachronisms, Tom Stoppard uses his 1993 play Arcadia to explore the effects on man's psyche of the transition from Newton's Laws to the laws of thermodynamics and from thermodynamics to chaos theory. However, remarkably similar reactions to these changes are also reflected in works from the actual time periods following these shifts in scientific understanding. Modernist literature is believed by many to reflect a sense of depression about the implications of the second law (...) of thermodynamics, which is exemplified in T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land. Likewise, the comfort provided by the revisions to thermodynamics made by chaos theory are reflected frequently in contemporary popular culture, such as in the current television series Numb3rs. Through the invocation of science, all three works suggest that man is uncomfortable with too much predictability and that comfort can instead be found in chaos and unpredictability. (shrink)

Preceding his Arcadia with a non-existing quotation, Jim Crace proves to be no Arcadian innocent: challenging the shrewdness of his readers, the contemporary novelist seems to take pleasure in inviting them to an intellectual game which begins before the novel unfolds. The highly evocative title and the bogus quotation are bound to evoke associations which become the subject of minute examination in the novel. Its result turns out to be as astounding as the uncommon aphoristic trap laid for the (...) readers. This article examines the significance of the bogus quotation as a part of the novel’s message and a key to its interpretation. (shrink)

Poseidon has recently benefited from renewed scholarly attention, contributing to re-evaluate his role in ancient Greek imaginary. By opening the research previously limited to literary evidence to the archaeological and topographical evidence, new perspectives on “Poseidonian landscapes” have emerged. Arcadia, a land-locked region where Poseidon Hippios is celebrated with fervour, is here taken as a case study to try and go further in identifying the god’s realm of action. Areas with floods seem to be his preferred worship places, while (...) in other areas he plays a crucial part in myths but is hardly worshipped alone. There also seems to be a connection between his patronage over freshwater and horses. Overall, natural observation seems to have been instrumental in choosing the location of his worship places. (shrink)

O pensamento de Merleau-Ponty como instituição.

Cet article cherche à relativiser l’idée que la période 1968-1970 a représenté un rupture totale dans l’histoire de l’homosexualité en France. Tout en acceptant que le style des nouveaux mouvements « gais » des années 1968 rompt avec celui de leur prédécesseur Arcadie, il propose une lecture contextualisée de la politique d’Arcadie qui remet en cause les interprétations de l’historiographie traditionnelle, suggérant même que la vision de l’homosexualité de ces nouveaux mouvements est quelquefois plus proche d’Arcadie qu’elle ne leur paraisse.

Prefaced by an argument that the ancients understood mimesis as fundamental to being human, and art as therefore essential to human moral and intellectual development, this book starts from the problematic status of the (happily ending) Iphigenia in Poetics. How Aristotle must explicate tragedy to hold Iphigenia as the best thus sets up the exploration of comedy. Chapter two shows that comedy aims at the catharsis of desire and sympathy. This analysis is then applied in detail to Aristophanes’ Acharnians, Shakespeare’s (...) As You Like It and Stoppard’s Arcadia, exhibiting the cross-cultural application of the theory which Aristotle would expect. (shrink)

Heracles had gone to Arcadia to fetch the Erymanthian boar; when he had just returned he heard of the voyage of Argo, and, hastily depositing the boar at Mycenae, departed to join Jason without the knowledge of Eurystheus. λυρκήιον Αργος άμείψας is supposed to mean ‘having come to Lyrceian Argos’. But, first, άμείβω Αργος ought not to mean ‘I come to Argos’; άμείβω and άμείβομαι alike mean either change or pass or leave; enter they do not mean. The lexica (...) quote passages as meaning enter which do not mean any such thing; Θύρας or βαλόν άμείβω is ‘I pass’ the door or threshold, πόλιν έκπόλεως άμείβω or άμείβομαι is ‘I change one city for another,’ άμείβομαι έρκοςόδότων ‘I pass the hedge of the teeth,’ and so on. Until I see an instance of it I shall not believe that πόλιν άμείβω can mean merely I enter or come to a city. Nor can we take it to mean pass in this place, because the road from Arcadia to Mycenae does not pass Argos. Secondly, what is Lyrceian Argos ? Whether a river or a mountain be implied by Lyrceian, it is not a Greek expression; we do not speak of Hymettian Athens or Cephisian Athens, of Cithaeronian or Asopian Thebes or Boeotia. There is indeed found the expression Πηλιωτιν 'Ιωλκόν in Euripides, Medea 484, and the scholiast on iv. 131 says that Τιτνίδος Αίης means Aea of the river Titen, referring to Eratosthenes as his authority for the river, but no one else knows anything about it, and it is more than probable that Mr. Mooney is right in regarding it with suspicion. (shrink)

European thought begins with the Greeks. Scientific and philosophic thinking--the pursuit of truth and the grasping of unchanging principles of life--is a historical development, an achievement; and, as Bruno Snell writes in The Discovery of the Mind, nothing less than a revolution. The Greeks did not take mental resources already at their disposal and merely map out new subjects for discussion and investigation. In poetry, drama, and philosophy they in fact discovered the human mind. The stages in man's gradual understanding (...) of himself are revealed in the course of ancient literature from Homer to Virgil. A rational view of the nature of man slowly established itself in the creations of epic and lyric poetry, tragedy and literary criticism, pre-Socratic thought, and early Greek ethics all the way to the discovery of humanitas and the spiritual landscape of Virgil's Arcadia. The Discovery of the Mind is a landmark work in tracing this evolution of consciousness--one of the distinguishing characteristics of the history of man. (shrink)