This work presents an approach to the study of comparative politics that builds on the assumption that political actors and institutions operate within constructed communities of meaning, which in turn interface with other such communities.

The macaronic poem beginning “Syng y wold, butt, alas!” given the title On the Times by Thomas Wright, has not attracted much notice, but those who have chosen to comment on it do not seem seriously to have questioned Wright's dating of 1388. In what follows I hope to show that this date is wrong and that On the Times was probably written some eight years earlier. Though such redating is hardly likely to enhance the poem's literary reputation, which is (...) deservedly modest, the historical importance of its satire on contemporary abuses is considerably increased once we accept that it was composed on the eve of the Peasants' Revolt. (shrink)

This work deals with questions that range across the traditional disciplines of natural science and philosophy. Of these questions, some are about things usually thought of as scientific, such as embryonic development and evolution; others are about things, such as human language, intelligence and learning, which have been the concern if both scientists and philosophers.

W.D. Hamilton, Narrow Roads of Gene Land: The Collected Papers of W.D. Hamilton.