Based on narrative, iconographical, and liturgical sources, this is the first systematic study to trace the story of the ritual of royal self-coronations from Ancient Persia to the present. Exposing as myth the idea that Napoleon's act of self-coronation in 1804 was the first extraordinary event to break the secular tradition of kings being crowned by bishops, Jaume Aurell vividly demonstrates that self-coronations were not as transgressive or unconventional as has been imagined. Drawing on numerous examples of royal self-coronations, (...) with a particular focus on European Kings of the Middle Ages, including Frederic II of Germany, Alphonse XI of Castile, Peter IV of Aragon and Charles III of Navarra, Aurell draws on history, anthropology, ritual studies, liturgy and art history to explore royal self-coronations as privileged sites at which the frontiers and limits between the temporal and spiritual, politics and religion, tradition and innovation are encountered. (shrink)

El presente artículo trata de superar la división entre una epistemología de virtudes confiabilista y otra responsabilista. En su lugar se presenta una visión orgánica del conocimiento humano. La visión orgánica –también denominada pre-cismática- articula aspectos confiabilistas y responsabilistas. Finalmente se discute un nuevo concepto: felicidad epistémica, que se justifica desde la perspectiva agentiva del conocimiento. Así, se sostiene que parece razonable pensar que el conocimiento es un tipo de acción cuyo fin último es la felicidad. Esta felicidad se puede (...) obtener por vía negativa –al no obtener una verdad pero sí una mejora de la situación epistémica- o por vía positiva, esto es, cuando se da en el blanco de la verdad. (shrink)

Trente ans après la fin définitive de la dictature et l'approbation de la Constitution de 1978, après trente-sept ans de franquisme, le moment semble venu pour l'Espagne moderne de revenir sur les années de dictature. L'ombre du franquisme n'avait jamais disparu, mais elle revient, puissante, avec l'opposition des partis de droite à la « Loi sur la mémoire historique » et le refus de l'Église de reconnaître une quelconque responsabilité dans les exactions du franquisme. La rencontre entre la Mémoire et (...) la Loi est au cœur de cet article.Thirty years alter dictatorship finally came to an end with the adoption of the 1978 Constitution and after thirty seven years of Francoism, the time seems to have come for modern Spain to look back on those years. The shadow of Francoism had never entirely disappeared, and it has returned, powerfully, with oppo­sition from the right-wing parties to the "Historical Memory Law" and the Church' s refusal to admit to any responsibility in the abuses of power meted out by the Franco regime. The encounter between Memory and Law is the core issue of this article. (shrink)

Dans cet article, j’essaie de montrer la pertinence de la Phénoménologie de la perception pour répondre aux défis de la philosophie dans un monde à la fois déchirée et globalisateur. Si on laisse de côté la dimension théorétique du monde, nous recupérons le fond obscure de l’existence, fond de tous les espaces. Il s’agirait d’un espace primigène dans lequel on trouve le lien affectif propre de l’expérience des enfants et des primitives. Mais le vécu de ces espaces implique une perte (...) du espace de jeu qui fait possible le monde comme ouverture et intersubjectivité. La réponse de Merleau-Ponty devant le psychologisme suppose un tournant envers la philosophie traditionnelle parce qu´il réussit à garder près de sa conscience les consciences «autres» du schizophrène ou de l’enfant. (shrink)

Karl Popper always claimed himself to be a realist. However, his constant denial to give definitions to the philosophical concepts, makes it difficult to understand what exactly he means by realism. This article focuses the attention on three meanings of Popper's realism: a metaphysical, an epistemological and a sensible realism. The later sense can be rooted in the new studies on the ethical roots of all Popper's philosophy.

Edmund T. Whittaker’s second edition of his A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity is famous for his treatment of Einstein as an almost irrelevant character in the emergence of what he called “the relativity theory of Poincaré and Lorentz.” Historians of science have given a number of explanations, which include Whittaker’s scientific conservatism as an old classical physicist, his commitment to the ether, the pre-eminent role he attributed to mathematics over physics, and foundational philosophical disagreements, to name (...) a few. And in the background, often more implicit than forthright, the accusation of antisemitism looms over Whittaker. In this paper I intend to shed new light on this controversy by taking into consideration the abundant correspondence between Whittaker and his son preserved in the archives of the Fisher Library, University of Toronto. With it, we will get a more complex and personal view of the context in which his attempt at dethroning Einstein took place. Together with the abovementioned reasons, this correspondence shows that the problematic status quo of general relativity in the early 1950s, a period that has been described as the low-mark of general relativity, was very influential in the historical treatment he gave to Einstein. This is an aspect hardly mentioned in the historical work on this controversy and, from this correspondence, it appears to be central to understanding Whittaker at the time of drafting the new History. His possible antisemitic bias will also be addressed, though with the insufficient information on this subject the matter cannot be settled. (shrink)

The origin of the bilaterian metazoans from radial ancestors is one of the biggest puzzles in animal evolution. A way to solve it is to identify the nature and main features of the last common ancestor of the bilaterians (LCB). Recent progress in molecular phylogeny has shown that many platyhelminth flatworms, regarded for a long time as basal bilaterians, now belong to the lophotrochozoan protostomates. In contrast, the LCB is now considered a complex organism bearing several features of modern bilaterians. (...) Here we discuss an alternative view, in which acoelomorph (Acoela + Nemertodermatida) flatworms, which do not belong to the Platyhelminthes, represent the earliest extant bilaterian clade. Sequences from ribosomal and other nuclear genes, Hox cluster genes, and reinterpretation of some morphological features strongly support the basal position of acoelomorphs arguing against a complex LCB. This reconstruction backs the old planuloid–acoeloid hypothesis and may help our understanding of the evolution of body axes, Hox genes and the Cambrian explosion. BioEssays 26:1046–1057, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The memories of the teaching we had during the seventies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona show, forty years later, that this teaching was not a matter of a premeditated learning program. However, the diversity of the teachers we knew, their characters and examples, project a certain shadow of a philosophical experience that has been shared by several generations of contemporary Catalan philosophers.

The memories of the teaching we had during the seventies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona show, forty years later, that this teaching was not a matter of a premeditated learning program. However, the diversity of the teachers we knew, their characters and examples, project a certain shadow of a philosophical experience that has been shared by several generations of contemporary Catalan philosophers.

Many American readers like to regard Alexis de Tocqueville as an honorary American and democrat--as the young French aristocrat who came to early America and, enthralled by what he saw, proceeded to write an American book explaining democratic America to itself. Yet, as Lucien Jaume argues in this acclaimed intellectual biography, Democracy in America is best understood as a French book, written primarily for the French, and overwhelmingly concerned with France. "America," Jaume says, "was merely a pretext for (...) studying modern society and the woes of France." For Tocqueville, in short, America was a mirror for France, a way for Tocqueville to write indirectly about his own society, to engage French thinkers and debates, and to come to terms with France's aristocratic legacy. By taking seriously the idea that Tocqueville's French context is essential for understanding Democracy in America, Jaume provides a powerful and surprising new interpretation of Tocqueville's book as well as a fresh intellectual and psychological portrait of the author. Situating Tocqueville in the context of the crisis of authority in postrevolutionary France, Jaume shows that Tocqueville was an ambivalent promoter of democracy, a man who tried to reconcile himself to the coming wave, but who was also nostalgic for the aristocratic world in which he was rooted--and who believed that it would be necessary to preserve aristocratic values in order to protect liberty under democracy. Indeed, Jaume argues that one of Tocqueville's most important and original ideas was to recognize that democracy posed the threat of a new and hidden form of despotism. (shrink)

Learning to live together is the central concern of education everywhere in the world. Traditional sporting games provide interpersonal experiences that shape miniature communities charged with emotional meanings. The objective of this study was to analyze the ethnomotor features of TSG in three Catalan-speaking Autonomous Communities and to interpret them for constructing emotional communities. The study followed a phenomenological-interpretative paradigm. The identification of TSG was done by a hermeneutic methodological approach by using an exhaustive exploratory documentary research. We studied 503 (...) games collected in the Dictionary Català-Valencià-Balear de Alcover and Moll. Instruments and procedure: A database was built up with information about the internal and external logic of the games. The validity of the information was confirmed by means of a concordance test between the researchers. Data processing was carried out by means of classification trees, identifying the predictive variables of the types of TSG. Most of the TSGs were sociomotor games. The classification tree identified four explanatory variables. Three variables were internal traits, and one variable corresponded to external logic. Features of the TSG of the Catalan-speaking Autonomous Communities build original emotional communities. The ethnomotor regularities triggered emotional experiences associated with pleasure for living together ; domesticating of aggressiveness over opponents ; developing sustainability ; educating the competition ; and interpersonal well-being based on the community. (shrink)

Historical accounts of the work of J. J. Thomson find a contradiction in his work. On the one hand, he is presented as a Maxwellian theoretical physicist dealing with a typically Victorian entity, the ether. On the other hand, the analysis of his experimental work at the Cavendish seems to have little connection with his mathematical work. In this paper, I discuss the metaphysical views of J. J. Thomson, and argue that his deep belief in the ultimate continuity of matter (...) can be seen to give a framework to both his theoretical and his experimental work. His metaphysical beliefs were not in the least shaken by the discovery of discrete phenomena and entities, not even by his suggestion of the existence of corpuscles later known as electrons. His formation in Cambridge, together with some ideas that he acquired in his youth at Owens College, Manchester, are the key to understanding his metaphysics and the role it plays in his scientific work. (shrink)

This article delves into the reception of John W. Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science in Spain. With two translations into Spanish appearing almost simultaneously in 1876, the conflict became a weapon in a long political dispute. The tensions between conservatives and liberals, between monarchists and republicans had the university and pedagogical reforms as one of the main battlefields. One of the chief reformist movements was informed by “Krausism,” an ideology that had academic freedom as one if (...) its central tenets. The similarities between the educational agenda of Draper and that of Krausists explain why the former's book resonated among members of the latter group. The article argues that in order to understand the reception of Draper in Spain, one should pay attention to the disputes about national identity and educational reforms, so as to place the so‐called conflict thesis in the context of opposing Spanish patriotisms. (shrink)

What is the classic in history? What is a classic in historical writing? Very few historians and critics have addressed these questions, and when they have done so, it has been only in a cursory manner. These are queries that require some explanation regarding historical texts because of their peculiar ambivalence between science and art, content and form, sources and imagination, scientific and narrative language. Based on some examples of the Western historiographical tradition, I discuss in this article to what (...) extent historians should engage the concept of the classic – as has been done for literary texts. If one assumes that the historical text is not only a referential account but also a narrative analogous to literary texts, then the concept of the classic becomes one of the keys for understanding the historical text – and may improve our understanding not only of historiography, but of history itself. I will argue in this article that it is possible to identify a category of the classic text in some historical writings, precisely because of the literarity they possess without losing their specific historical condition. Because of their narrative condition, historical texts share some of the features assigned to literary texts – that is, endurance, timelessness, universal meaningfulness, resistance to historical criticism, susceptibility to multiple interpretations, and ability to function as models. Yet, since historical texts do not construct imaginary worlds but reflect external realities, they also have to achieve some specific features according to this referential content – that is, surplus of meaning, historical use of metaphors, effect of contemporaneity without damaging the pastness of the past, and a certain appropriation of literariness. Without seeking to be normative or systematic, this article focuses on some specific features of the historical classic, offering a series of reflections to open rather than try to close a debate on this complex topic. (shrink)

Western historiography experienced an important shift in the seventies due to the emergence of the theories associated with the linguistic turn, postmodernism and postestructuralism. Hayden White was one of the historians who led this transformation in the historical discipline. He argued that a historical text could be compared to a literary artifact on the leven of the form, since both use the same instrument —narrative— to representation the truth —whose content is factual events in history and fiction in literature. This (...) idea revolutionized contemporary approaches to the interpretation of historical texts. This paper analyzes White’s theories and its effects on contemporary historical writing. (shrink)

What is the classic in history? What is a classic in historical writing? Very few historians and critics have addressed these questions, and when they have done so, it has been only in a cursory manner. These are queries that require some explanation regarding historical texts because of their peculiar ambivalence between science and art, content and form, sources and imagination, scientific and narrative language. Based on some examples of the Western historiographical tradition, I discuss in this article to what (...) extent historians should engage the concept of the classic – as has been done for literary texts. If one assumes that the historical text is not only a referential account but also a narrative analogous to literary texts, then the concept of the classic becomes one of the keys for understanding the historical text – and may improve our understanding not only of historiography, but of history itself. I will argue in this article that it is possible to identify a category of the classic text in some historical writings, precisely because of the literarity they possess without losing their specific historical condition. Because of their narrative condition, historical texts share some of the features assigned to literary texts – that is, endurance, timelessness, universal meaningfulness, resistance to historical criticism, susceptibility to multiple interpretations, and ability to function as models. Yet, since historical texts do not construct imaginary worlds but reflect external realities, they also have to achieve some specific features according to this referential content – that is, surplus of meaning, historical use of metaphors, effect of contemporaneity without damaging the pastness of the past, and a certain appropriation of literariness. Without seeking to be normative or systematic, this article focuses on some specific features of the historical classic, offering a series of reflections to open rather than try to close a debate on this complex topic. (shrink)

El objetivo del libro no es otro, pues, que «retracer l’histoire de l’alchimie au Moye Âge». De acuerdo con esta perspectiva histórica, el libro esta estructurado en cuatro grandes capítulos. Primero: La réception de l’alchimie arabe au Moyen Âge ; segundo: Les principaux corpus alchimiques arabo-latins ; tercero: L’alchimie latine y, finalmente, el cuarto: L’alchimie à la fin du Moyen Âge: La transition vers la Renaissance. Una introducción, la conclusión, veinte páginas de bibliografia, el index nominum i el general completan (...) el libro. (shrink)

How do nuclear technologies become commonplace? How have the borders between the exceptional and the banal been drawn and redrawn over the last 70 years in order to make nuclear energy part of everyday life? This special issue analyzes the role of fun and display, broadly construed, in shaping the cultural representation and the material circulation (or non-circulation) of nuclear technologies. Four case studies, covering the United States, Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, and Ukraine from the 1950s to the 2000s, explore (...) how specific forms of public display and playful practices of cultural production were used as means to banalize (or de-banalize) nuclear energy. This introduction addresses the main theoretical and historiographical signposts of the special issue and outlines the different ways in which the articles explore them. (shrink)