13 research outputs found
Aesthetic sense and social cognition: : a story from the Early Stone Age
Human aesthetic practices show a sensitivity to the ways that the appearance of an artefact manifests skills and other qualities of the maker. We investigate a possible origin for this kind of sensibility, locating it in the need for co-ordination of skill-transmission in the Acheulean stone tool culture. We argue that our narrative supports the idea that Acheulean agents were aesthetic agents. In line with this we offer what may seem an absurd comparison: between the Acheulean and the Quattrocento. In making it we display some hidden complexity in human aesthetic responses to an artefact. We conclude with a brief review of rival explanationsâbiological and/or culturalâof how this skills-based sensibility became a regular feature of human aesthetic practices
Do younger Sleeping Beauties prefer a technological prince?
In this paper we investigate
recent Sleeping Beauties cited in patents (SB-SNPRs). We find that the
increasing trend of the relative number of SBs stopped around 1998. Moreover,
we find that the time lag between the publication year of the SB-SNPRs and their
first citation in a patent is becoming shorter in recent years. Our
observations also suggest that, on average, in the more recent years SBs are
awakened increasingly earlier by a âtechnological princeâ rather than by a
âscientific princeâ. These observations suggest that SBs with technological
importance are âdiscoveredâ earlier in an application-oriented context. Then,
because of this earlier recognized technological relevance, papers may be cited
also earlier in a scientific context. Thus early recognized technological
relevance may âpreventâ papers to become an SB. The scientific impact of
Sleeping Beauties is generally not necessarily related to the technological
importance of the SBs, as far as measured with number and impact of the citing
patents. The analysis of the occurrence of inventor-author relations as well as
the citation years of inventor-author patents suggest that the scientific
awakening of Sleeping Beauties only rarely occurs by inventor-author
self-citation.
Merit, Expertise and Measuremen