| 1. |
- Brissman, Henrik
(författare)
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Mellan nation och omvärld : debatt i Sverige om vetenskapens organisering och finansiering samt dess internationella och nationella aspekter under 1900-talets första hälft
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Between the nation and the surrounding world - Debate in Sweden regarding the organisation and financing of research and its international and national aspects during the first half of the twentieth century My thesis regards the attitude of the Swedish research society to research as a national and an international phenomenon during the period 1900-1950. My work relates to the question in which way the landscape of the research policy of the surrounding world has influenced Swedish research during this period. Primarily it deals with a change between German and American influences. The aim is to give a contribution to the understanding of the national and international character of research. The thesis consists of three parts; Part 1 deals with the international landscape of organisation and co-operation in research. Such phenomenon as the German “Mandarins”, when the Nazis seized power of in Germany, the progressive ideal of research, “Bernalism” and the consequences for science in Europe and United States through the financial support from Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Foundation is discussed. A picture of the fundamental feature concerning the relationship between research, economy and politics in Europe and United States is given. In order to relate the international picture to the Swedish conditions, I discuss the debate regarding to the societal role of research within the Swedish research society, there I show the span between the national and international aspects concerning Swedish research. The national motive was strong and a legitimizing element for the actors of research, both when they articulated their needs in political discourses and in the national debate. They argued that the destiny of the nation was dependent of that research had a leading role in the society. Most of the problems in society could be soluted with scientific methods. The discussion of the freedom of research and it’s societal use was in great respect influenced of contemporary international currents, even though the national perspectives and priorities were the most important. Part 2 deals with five studies, the boundary organisation The Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences (Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien), the professional organisation The Swedish Society of Medicine (Svenska Läkaresällskapet) and the research councils, Medical Research Council (Medicinska forskningsrådet), The Research Council of Social Sciences (Samhällsvetenskapliga forskningsrådet) and The Humanistic Fund (Humanistiska fonden). In these studies I focus on the international relations of the scientific organisations. Part 3 will show the results in a summary discussion. I argue that the view of the Swedish research society on international scientific cooperation is connected with the national needs and motifs. International and national motives are no way contrary to each other – if no nations, then no internationalism. From the point of view of the scientific organisations, there are no evidences that Swedish researchers and scientific-political actors were so unambiguous dependent of German science and science politics. Instead there was a complex mosaic of international relations, which were concerning several nations, and Germany was one among many, even if it was an important one. United States, Great Britain and the Nordic countries were other important nations to have a scientific exchange with, and in some cases more important than Germany.
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| 2. |
- Nilsson, Kristian
(författare)
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Baltic-Finns and Scandinavians : Comparative-Historical Linguistics and the Early History of the Nordic Region
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The study investigates how the early nineteenth century invention of comparative-historical linguistics affected European ethnohistoric thought, and how this process altered ethnohistorical research on the early, pre-Christian history of the Nordic region. The case study of the Nordic region (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Estonia) includes the discipline histories of Finno-Ugric studies, linguistics and the larger field of intellectual history. The study examines the ethnohistorical narratives on relations between Finno-Ugric-speaking Baltic-Finns and Indo-European-speaking Scandinavians. The study covers a time period from the Middle Ages until 1900, with a chronological focus on the period 1770-1900.
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| 3. |
- Christensen-Nugues, Charlotte
(författare)
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Och de skall vara ett hjärta : konsensusdoktrinen i medeltida kanonisk rätt
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- One of the most important aspects of the marriage legislation in medieval canon law is the doctrine of free choice. According to this doctrine, established by pope Alexander III in the second half of the twelfth century, the validity of a marriage depended solely on the freely given consent of the parties. Neither family nor witnesses, not even the presence of a priest were necessary to form a valid marriage. The consensualist doctrine revolutionized the very conception of marriage and had important consequences for practically all layers of society. At a first glance, it seems astonishingly modern but a study of the underlying theories shows that it was founded on very different, and apparently, non-modern ideas. That these ideas can seem foreign to us should not lead to an underestimation of their actual importance, even from a modern perspective. They gave rise to one of the most fundamental aspects in the western marriage model – the individuals right to marry if, when, and with whomever he or she chooses. This study focuses on the interaction between sacramental theory and marriage legislation, more specifically, the connection between the ascetic tradition within the Church and the consensualist doctrine. Paradoxically, it was to a large extent the ascetic tradition that prompted a personalistic definition of marriage as depending primarily on the personal feelings and aspirations of the spouses. This idea of marriage was the foundation of the consensualist doctrine. Several authors have argued that the ideal of chastity in the medieval Church was incompatible with the idea of married love. This could seem like a common sense argument but in reality the ideal of chastity was a prerequisite for a more spiritual definition of marriage where the emotional relationship between the spouses was emphasized. As Hugh of Saint-Victor puts it, the spouses should not only become one flesh, but, above all, one heart. At the end of the twelfth century, the consensualist doctrine was firmly established in theory. Another question is if and how it was applied in reality and, not least, how the lay population perceived it. To answer these questions, I have studied a register from the Officials’ Court at Cerisy, Normandy, during the period 1314-1346. The importance of consent appears very clearly in the marriage litigation. Neither the family’s wishes nor the persons’ reputation (if, for example, they had previously been fined for fornication by the same Court) not even if and with whom the involved parties had children seem to have had any real bearing on the Courts rulings in these cases. Another important aspect in the register is the extent of the lay population’s knowledge of canon law, even in its more complicated aspects. The register from Cerisy not only shows how the marriage legislation in canon law was applied by the Court, but also that it had become an integrated part of rural society in fourteenth century Normandy.
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| 4. |
- Danneskiold-Samsøe, Jakob
(författare)
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Muses and Patrons : Cultures of Natural Philosophy in Seventeenth Century Scandinavia
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study analyses the development of natural philosophy in Scandinavia in the 16th and 17th century. Rather than dealing with individual natural philosophers and ideas, it evolves around groups of natural philsophers - the Bartholin family and the former assistants of Tycho Brahe in Denmark, the Rudbeck family in Sweden. The study of nature is put into a cultural, religious, social, and political context, and much attention is given to the phenomenon of patronage. General developments in the two countries, particularly political, are drawn upon to explain the different conext, national style, and development of natural philosophy in Denmark and Sweden
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| 5. |
- Eriksson, Jonnie, 1978-
(författare)
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Monstret & människan : Paré, Deleuze och teratologiska traditioner i fransk filosofi, från renässanshumanism till posthumanism
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation studies the problem of the inhuman in relation to human nature in philosophy from antiquity to the present, highlighting the interrelationship between science and philosophy in the development of concepts of monstrosity in France from mid-sixteenth century to late twentieth century thought. By means of constraint, it focuses on Ambroise Paré (1509/10–90) and Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) as representatives of early humanism and posthumanism, respectively. The study is divided into four chronologically ordered parts. In part I, four teratological traditions of philosophical import are discerned in antiquity: the naturalist, the humanist, the metaphysical, and the hermeneutical (each associated with a set of key names: in particular, Empedocles, Lucretius; Socrates, Protagoras; Plato, Aristotle; and Pliny, Augustine). Part II follows these traditions into the Renaissance where they intersect in the ‘books of wonder’, among which Paré’s Des monstres et prodiges (1573) is viewed to have had a lasting influence on the development of the science of teratology. Criticizing the positivistic conventions of interpretation of the book in question, notions of order, causality, diversity, and novelty are analyzed for the purpose of excavating from Paré’s work a natural philosophy which hinges on man’s capacity for knowledge; in such a humanist conception, monsters are not so much naturalized as nature becomes monstrous, while man is taken to reflect and encompass all the properties of natural things, thereby incorporating monstrosity in his singular variability. Part III provides an overview of the development of a scientific teratology from Cartesian mechanicism and rationalism, through theories of preformation, epigenesis, and transformation, to the materialist and vitalist debates of the early nineteenth century, when Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire create the discipline of teratology, and its aftermath in developmental and evolutionary biology. The general theme is the place of anomalies in the normal scheme of nature (and culture), as man becomes progressively taken as the norm for thought, ultimately rendering the inhuman as such unthought. Finally, part IV looks to Deleuze as an attempt in the late 1900s to construct a posthumanist philosophy of nature where monstrosity is the problem which rather generates thought; it thus chronologically traces formulations of a concept of monstrosity in his body of work, from the 1940s to the 1990s. In Différence et répétition (1968), Deleuze is found to furnish three interconnected theses to define monstrosity, regarding problems of determination, synthesis, and differentiation, where the problematic as such (the nature of difference itself) is conceptualized as the ‘idea’ of monstrosity, not any particular physical shape. After analyzing the concept of the ‘body without organs’ as an issue of identity and materiality, tracing it back to its formulation in Logique du sens (1969), these theses of monstrosity are then applied to a study of Deleuze’s later philosophy, emphasizing Mille plateaux (1980), Logique de la sensation (1981), and Cinéma 1–2 (1983–85), as side-stepping the human norm in order to think its anomaly (the inhuman) as the condition for creativity. This is evidenced in his ideas of technology and the arts as experimental practices of becoming inhuman. The monster is thus regarded as a ‘conceptual persona’ in a Deleuzian philosophy of the virtual Figure—challenging all actual forms—of an inhuman time for the experience of difference in itself.
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| 6. |
- Flores, Fernando
(författare)
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Från Rudbeck till Mandelbrot : Identifikation, imitation och komparation i nutidsvetenskap
- 2004
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- InledningDet är kväll den 15:e januari 2004. Idag var det den andra dagen i Mijailovic-rättegången i Stockholms tingsrätt. Mijailovic försvarar sig, men inte genom att svara på frågor. Han representerar det moderna. Hans psykos, säger han, fick honom att få panik, höra röster och döda en utrikesminister. Om han fått träffa en läkare skulle allt varit annorlunda. Sedan början av 1800-talet har detta sätt resonera varit en vanlig, om inte alltid godtagen försvarslinje och förklaringsmodell, i synnerhet när det gäller allvarliga våldsbrott. Foucault visade i sin bok om Pierre Rivière hur experterna redan i början av 1800-talet kunnat sjanghaja någon som inte alls åberopat vanvett, för att ge ett gott exempel för denna försvarsposition. Parallellt med rättegången, men utanför den, utvecklas en talan som helt och hållet stöder Mijailovics position. Kritiken av den "postmoderna” psykiatrin, som förebrås relativism och socialkonstruktivism är hård och skoningslös. En antibiologisk och antiorganisk psykiatrikritik, säger de moderna, leder till charlatanism, nonchalans och ansvarslöshet. Här blir Mijailovic ett exempel. Den dominerande uppfattning som enligt media "totalt dominerar bland experterna" är emellertid en helt annan. Mijailovic är, säger man, trots hans tidigare bevisade aparta och egenartade beteende, absolut inte vansinnig, och har inte heller varit det. Han är rationell och planerande. Han rår för sina handlingar, tänker ut, förföljer och drar slutsatser. Så kommer det onda, detta förmoderna element par préference, in i diskussionen. Det är i detta förvirrade diskussionsklimat jag möter Fernando Flores' nya bok. Författaren har tidigare demonstrerat sin förmåga att leverera en överraskande meta-antropologi. Vad vi nu möter är en ny antro-historia, ett försök att rita upp ett slags tidskarta över positioner i tänkandets utveckling. Det här sker inte genom ett försök att demonstrera kontinuiteter. Snarare är det brott, överraskningar och återtaganden av utvecklingslinjer som står i centrum. Ibland blir hans bok ett Rekordmagasin där tragiska moderna hjältar som Turing och Foucault figurerar med sina uppfinningar och diskursiva bravader, ibland en filosofilexikon, och ibland en originell och kärleksfull diskussion om vad man kan få ut av någon av de tänkare som Flores älskar, som Wittgenstein eller Merleau-Ponty. Som amatörläsare kan man inte annat än förtjusas och förvirras av Fernando Flores' intensiva attack och hans ständiga perspektivbyten. Sune SunessonLund, januari 2004
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| 7. |
- Flores, Fernando
(författare)
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Mellan åsikt och vittnesbörd : Amerika och Västerlandets arkaiska rötter
- 2004. - 2
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Bok (refereegranskat)abstract
- The question of America’s cultural position in relation to the rest of the world is essential for all research connected to America and to the history of modern Europe. This situation has become obvious over the last years because of our societies’ latest “crisis”, with the consecration of the “post-modern” and “global” view of society, history and culture. The aim of the dissertation is to analyse the relation between an archaic and a modern world view during the fifteen-century. The term “archaic” not viewed as a synonym of “antique”. “Antique” often implies a period of time far from today. I use the term “archaic”, implying a world view, a cosmology, which can be found within any period. Archaic is a way of thinking history; a way of understanding the world and a way of developing identity relations. This interpretation of the relation between the archaic and the modern, lead my argumentation to the conclusion that these different world views must be based on different structures of reason, and that fluctuations between the two structures of reasoning ought to have created a “history of reason”. One of the central conclusions of this thesis is that modernity and archaism develop, disappear and develop again within each act of communication. I also discuss the problem of how the archaic communicates with the modern. How can cultural exchange happen when the cultural conditions are so different? I introduce the idea of cultural influence as a kind of “contagion”. Cultural influence is considered active already at a micro-level via every form of contact. I assume that people can assimilate foreign cultural products even when these products appear in a vague form or unclear presentation. My second assumption is that a culture can assimilate as much as it can give away. I call this assumption the principle of proportional cultural exchange. I found an important starting point in Marcel Mauss’ The Gift and in Lévi-Strauss’ developments of Mauss’ ideas. The work of Lévi-Strauss, includes an illuminating presentation of ideas about delimitation of borders between archaic and modern worldviews. The work of Lévi-Strauss provides an obligatory reference for all studies of the relation between archaic and modern rationality. The one hundred and fifty year old ideas of archaic society of Marx and Engels are then discussed. I especially found the ideas of “communism” and “property” confusing. However, Marx’ study of the “Asiatic production’s system” can yet today illustrate the socio-economical situation of Mexico in the times of the conquest. At the same time, the views of Morgan, Marx and Engels show themselves to be strongly influenced by the traditional mythical ideas about “primitive” societies inherited from Thomas More, Bartolomé de Las Casas, Montaigne, Andreae and Campanella.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Håkansson, Håkan
(författare)
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Seeing the Word : John Dee and Renaissance Occultism
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study reassesses the occult philosophy of the British polymath John Dee (1527-1609). Focusing on his treatise Monas hieroglyphica (1564) and his notorious angelic conversations in the 1580s, it describes Dee’s philosophical career as a continuous search for a language which could yield knowledge of both nature and God. Situating Dee’s philosophy in the context of early modern “symbolic exegesis”, a group of discursive practices aimed at uncovering the creative principles of God by means of language, the study is an attempt to show how Dee’s seemingly divergent interests were interrelated. In Monas hieroglyphica he treated such disciplines as grammar, biblical exegesis, kabbalah, astronomy, alchemy, and mathematics as grounded on a common foundation, identical to the Word of God. By conceiving a graphical symbol, expressing God’s Word in visual form, Dee believed that he could bring these sciences to perfection. In the later angelic conversations, Dee’s aim was to recover the language spoken by the prelapsarian Adam. The Adamic language was conceived of as representing accurately God’s creative Word, and Dee’s recovery of this tongue would ultimately result in a complete restitution of both religion and knowledge. Dee’s works provide an example of how metaphoric associations between the Word of God, language, nature and the human soul could be exploited in Renaissance occult thought. Such metaphoric associations had an important role in shaping and legitimizing early modern views of symbolism, mysticism, and magic. Relying on Dee’s own sources, many of which still survive with his annotations, this study tries to reconstruct Dee’s search for the perfect language, while simultaneously stressing the syncretistic character of his views.
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| 10. |
- Libell, Monica
(författare)
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Morality Beyond Humanity : Schopenhauer, Grysanowski, and Schweitzer on Animal Ethics
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The study examines the character and development of the animal ethical ideas of three German thinkers: Arthur Schopenhauer, Ernst Grysanowski, and Albert Schweitzer. By situating them in their cultural and intellectual context, the study explores the differing meanings of their ethical views of animals and seeks to answer the question of how their ideas can be explained historically. It is argued that from the beginning of the 19th century through the 1880s, the animal ethical discourse received heightened attention, a development that was largely due to two parallel bodies of ideas, both emanating out of the Enlightenment project. The early 19th century showed an increasing scientific interest in basic existential matters, such as the physical body, intuition, and instincts. Simultaneously, a social movement arose, which stressed the importance of civilization, education, humane conduct, and social reforms. Towards the close of the century, these two movements merged, while their focus shifted to an interest in the economy and morality of Nature, which increasingly displaced the earlier ideal of civilized society and the overt focus on social reforms. The investigation suggests that these developments shows that the discourse of animal ethics followed a circular rather than linear pattern. The era started with the humanitarian ideals of the Enlightenment and ended in the early decades of the 20th century with the appropriation of social-Darwinist morality.
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