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Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

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Articles 31 - 53 of 53

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Review: Leonard N. Rosenband, Papermaking In Eighteenth-Century France: Management, Labor, And Revolution At The Montgolfier Mill, 1761-1805 (Baltimore, 2000), Andre Wakefield Apr 2002

Review: Leonard N. Rosenband, Papermaking In Eighteenth-Century France: Management, Labor, And Revolution At The Montgolfier Mill, 1761-1805 (Baltimore, 2000), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Leonard N. Rosenband. Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century France: Management, Labor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill, 1761-1805. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Pp. xv+210. $39.95.


Review: Richard F. Wetzell, Inventing The Criminal: A History Of German Criminology, 1880-1945 (Chapel Hill And London, 2000), Andre Wakefield Mar 2002

Review: Richard F. Wetzell, Inventing The Criminal: A History Of German Criminology, 1880-1945 (Chapel Hill And London, 2000), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Richard F. Wetzell. Inventing the Criminal: A History of German Criminology, 1880–1945. (Studies in Legal History.) xvi + 348 pp., bibl., index. Chapel Hill/London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. $39.95.


Review: Wilfried Schroeder, Ed., Vom Wunderzeichen Zum Naturobjekt (Bremen, 2001), Andre Wakefield Jan 2002

Review: Wilfried Schroeder, Ed., Vom Wunderzeichen Zum Naturobjekt (Bremen, 2001), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Wilfried Schröder, ed. Von Wunderzeichen zum Naturobject: Fallstudie (Changes in the Interpretation of the Aurora of March 17, 1716). 2001. Science edition, Potsdam and Bremen. 96 p. Softcover, $20.00.


The Indian's White Man, Bill Anthes Oct 2001

The Indian's White Man, Bill Anthes

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

The author discusses representations of whiteness by historical and contemporary American Indian artists.


Review: Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature And Nation (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), Andre Wakefield Sep 2001

Review: Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature And Nation (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Lisbet Koerner. Linnaeus: Nature and Nation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Pp. viii+297. $39.95.


Police Chemistry, Andre Wakefield Jul 2000

Police Chemistry, Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Johann von Justi, the foremost literary cameralist of his generation, served as chief police commissioner in Göttingen between 1755 and 1757. While in Göttingen, Justi offered lectures at the university on the “economic, police and cameral sciences.” He also arrested vagrants, wrote on chemistry, disciplined unruly students, conducted chemical experiments, supervised the pricing of Göttingen's staple goods, engaged in a public controversy with a prominent Berlin chemist, edited and published a bi-weekly periodical (Göttingische Policey-Amts Nachrichien), and worked with the university's curator to refashion the academic structure of the sciences. Taken together, these various activities reflected his broad …


Was Newton's Calculus A Dead End? The Continental Influence Of Maclaurin's Treatise Of Fluxions, Judith V. Grabiner May 1997

Was Newton's Calculus A Dead End? The Continental Influence Of Maclaurin's Treatise Of Fluxions, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

We will show that Maclaurin's Treatise of Fluxions did develop important ideas and techniques and that it did influence the mainstream of mathematics. The Newtonian tradition in calculus did not come to an end in Maclaurin's Britain. Instead, Maclaurin's Treatise served to transmit Newtonian ideas in calculus, improved and expanded, to the Continent. We will look at what these ideas were, what Maclaurin did with them, and what happened to this work afterwards. Then, we will ask what by then should be an interesting question: why has Maclaurin's role been so consistently underrated? Thse questions will involve general matters of …


Review Of: Australian Rock Art: A New Synthesis, Paul Faulstich Oct 1994

Review Of: Australian Rock Art: A New Synthesis, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Rock-art studies have now come of age, and are among the most fertile explorations of expressive culture. Through an interdisciplinary approach to its study, we have expanded our knowledge into the realms of aesthetics, belief systems, and social structures. Australian rock an is particularly significant, since it is a visual expression that has been practiced by contemporary as well as prehistoric Aboriginals. Robert Layton's most recent book -his "new synthesis" of Australian rock art- is an ambitious and successful analysis of Aboriginal rock art from across the continent.


X-Ray Rock Art Of Australia And Southeast Asia, Paul Faulstich Nov 1990

X-Ray Rock Art Of Australia And Southeast Asia, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Throughout the world, cultures have expressed social, economic, and religious concerns through art. As the oldest surviving artistic form, rock art illustrates mankind's continuing effort to understand his place in the material and immaterial worlds. The study of rock art can lend an important insight into prehistory, as it provides the earliest illustration of beliefs, technologies, and activities.


Shaman--Ritual--Place: Sacred Sites And Spiritual Transformation, Paul Faulstich Sep 1989

Shaman--Ritual--Place: Sacred Sites And Spiritual Transformation, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Throughout the world, tribal societies have held in sacred esteem certain locales within the physical environment. These have been utilized for the purposes of shamanism, ritual, magic, and mythologizing.


The Centrality Of Mathematics In The History Of Western Thought, Judith V. Grabiner Oct 1988

The Centrality Of Mathematics In The History Of Western Thought, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

This article explores the interplay of mathematics and philosophy in Western thought as well as applications to other fields.


"Sacred" And "Secular" In Australian Rock Art, Paul Faulstich Apr 1988

"Sacred" And "Secular" In Australian Rock Art, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Recently I have been questioned by several scholars about the terms "sacred" and "secular" in my research on Aboriginal rock art in Australia. It seems clear that many people are uncomfortable with distinguishing between sacred and secular within a tribal context. I would like to express my viewpoint briefly, and hopefully to clear up some of the misconceptions that are held about Aboriginal concepts of spirituality.


Aboriginal Dreaming, Paul Faulstich Dec 1986

Aboriginal Dreaming, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

The earth is the very substance of Australian Aboriginal life. The importance of the sense of place in Aboriginal life cannot be overstressed. An intimate knowledge of the environment and geography was, and still is, imperative to survival within a hunting and gathering context.


Computers And The Nature Of Man: A Historian's Perspective On Controversies About Artificial Intelligence, Judith V. Grabiner Oct 1986

Computers And The Nature Of Man: A Historian's Perspective On Controversies About Artificial Intelligence, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a historical perspective on recent controversies, from Turing's time on, about artificial intelligence, and to make clear that these are in fact controversies about the nature of man. First, I shall briefly review three recent controversies about artificial intelligence, controversies over whether computers can think and over whether people are no more than information-processing machines. These three controversies were each initiated by philosophers who, irrespective of what the programs of their time actually did, viewed with alarm the argument that if a machine can think, a thinking being is just a …


Dangerous 'Preservation' In Malaysia, Paul Faulstich Apr 1986

Dangerous 'Preservation' In Malaysia, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

A recent article appeared in a daily newspaper of Kuala Lumpur reports on alarming preservation measure that the Muzium Negara intends to implement at the Gua Tambun rock art site. They must be halted immediately if the rock paintings are to remain in a pristine state.


Rock Art In Malaysia, Paul Faulstich Apr 1985

Rock Art In Malaysia, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Very little is known to the scientific world on the rock art of Malaysia. It might therefore be worthwhile on a site in the state of Perak, just outside of the town of Ipoh. The rock is limestone, and there is a quarry about 1/8 of a mile down the hill from the paintings. Flaking of the cliff wall and the limestone excretions have badly damaged the paintings; rain also falls directly on the paintings. As far as we know, the site has never been adequately documented.


The Changing Concept Of Change: The Derivative From Fermat To Weierstrass, Judith V. Grabiner Sep 1983

The Changing Concept Of Change: The Derivative From Fermat To Weierstrass, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Historically speaking, there were four steps in the development of today's concept of the derivative, which I list here in chronological order. The derivative was first used; it was then discovered; it was then explored and developed; and it was finally defined. That is, examples of what we now recognize as derivatives first were used on an ad hoc basis in solving particular problems; then the general concept lying behind them these uses was identified (as part of the invention of calculus); then many properties of the derivative were explained and developed in applications both to …


Who Gave You The Epsilon? The Origins Of Cauchy's Rigorous Calculus, Judith V. Grabiner Mar 1983

Who Gave You The Epsilon? The Origins Of Cauchy's Rigorous Calculus, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

This paper recounts the history of how calculus came to get a rigorous basis in terms of the algebra of inequalities. The result is a brief history of the 150 years from Newton and Leibniz to Cauchy that produced the foundations of analysis.


Course Syllabus: Perspectives On Computers And Society, Judith V. Grabiner Oct 1982

Course Syllabus: Perspectives On Computers And Society, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Weizenbaum's statement is a compelling exhortation to his fellow professionals; nevertheless, I cannot wholly agree. It should be possible for nonprofessionals to understand, as a result of their own reading and experience, how computers interact with the rest of human life. The problems are not just technical, and their nature is not entirely unprecedented.


Závisí Matematická Pravda Od Času?, Judith V. Grabiner Jan 1980

Závisí Matematická Pravda Od Času?, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

This is a Slovak translation of Judith Grabiner's "Is Mathematical Truth Time-Dependent?," published in Volume 81 of American Mathematical Monthly (April 1974).


Mathematics In America: The First Hundred Years, Judith V. Grabiner Jan 1977

Mathematics In America: The First Hundred Years, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

There are two main questions I shall discuss in this paper. First, why was American mathematics so weak from 1776 to 1876? Second, and much more important, how did what happened from 1776-1876 produce an American mathematics respectable by international standards by the end of the nineteenth century? We will see that the "weakness" -at least as measured by the paucity of great names- co-existed with the active building both of mathematics education and of a mathematical community which reached maturity in the 1890's.


The Mathematician, The Historian, And The History Of Mathematics, Judith V. Grabiner Nov 1975

The Mathematician, The Historian, And The History Of Mathematics, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

The historian's basic questions, whether he is a historian of mathematics or of political institutions, are: what was the past like? and how did the present come to be? The second question --how did the present come to be?-- is the central one in the history of mathematics, whether done by historian or mathematician. But the historian's view of both past and present is quite different from that of the mathematician. The historian is interested in the past in its full richness, and sees any present fact as conditioned by a complex chain of causes in an almost unlimited past. …


Is Mathematical Truth Time-Dependent?, Judith V. Grabiner Apr 1974

Is Mathematical Truth Time-Dependent?, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Another such mathematical revolution occurred between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and was focused primarily on the calculus. This change was a rejection of the mathematics of powerful techniques and novel results in favor of the mathematics of clear definitions and rigorous proofs. Because this change, however important it may have been for mathematicians themselves, is not often discussed by historians and philosophers, its revolutionary character is not widely understood. In this paper, I shall first try to show that this major change did occur. Then, I shall investigate what brought it about. Once we have done this, we can …