Survival of the most memorable : Darwin’s textual afterlife through rhetoric in On the Origin of Species

The unassuming Charles Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution. However, one reason why Charles Darwin specifically appears as the figurehead for evolution, and not somebody else, comes from his rhetorical endeavour to create a textual afterlife for himself. Creating a personal afterlife for yourself within your written works is a trait that scholars have observed as a goal within many literary poets, authors, and scholars of the 19th century. Darwin, apparently, also imbued himself into his writings, especially On The Origin of Species, to create his own textual afterlife, one that would survive the other evolutionists of his era. Darwin survived by creating his own textual afterlife through the rhetorical elements of identification with his audiences and transcendence, concepts theorised by the 20th Century rhetorician, Kenneth Burke, strategies that Burke argued were the most fundamental to persuasion. I will show how Darwin survives the other evolutionists by creating his own textual afterlife that would connect to and exist in the collective memory of not only his contemporary Victorians, but also generations of people who would come cross Darwin and his theory of evolution.peer-reviewe

Some are more equal than others: responses to political violence

While it is true that the US has, for once, signed up to a UN Security Council statement which calls for an "immediate and unconditional humanitarian cease-fire”, this might still be considered a tactical step to prevent more strongly worded resolutions against Israel being proposed in the Security Council

Tango: the intimate dance of conflict transformation

The tango. Two dancers stand apart at first, looking at each other. The connection begins before the leader invites the follower to enter into the embrace. There is delicious enjoyment in the moment when both dancers find comfort and stability as the music begins to beat a rhythm in their blood and in their feet. The dancers are drawn together into the intimate space they will share for the next three minutes, repeated for as long as they wish, and knowing that no two dances with the same partner will ever be the same

Krapp's last tape in Great Britain : production history amid changing practice

This book chapter investigates the production history of the play, Krapp's last tape

Ethics in educational research: review boards, ethical issues and researcher development

Educational research, and research in the Social Sciences more generally, has experienced a growth in the introduction of ethical review boards since the 1990s. Increasingly, universities have set up ethics review procedures that require researchers to submit applications seeking approval to conduct research. Review boards and the rules and conditions under which they operate have been criticised as obstructive, unnecessarily bureaucratic, and even unethical. At the same time, review boards and their procedures have been acknowledged as contributing to consideration of the ethical conduct of research. This paper explores the issues related to ethical review and examines the wider ethical considerations that may arise during the research process. The paper concludes that a purely administrative process of review is inadequate to ensure the ethical conduct of research, especially qualitative research. Rather, it is argued that ethical research entails the resolution of a potential series of ethical dilemmas as they arise during research. As such, the ethical conduct of research is a matter of researcher formation and development

Ephesus and its coinage

The following is from an article in the Saturday Review, from Head's "Ephesus and Its Coinage," and serves to show the importance numismatics occupies as a key to historical problems

Temperature scaling, glassiness and stationarity in the Bak-Sneppen model

We show that the emergence of criticality in the locally-defined Bak-Sneppen model corresponds to separation over a hierarchy of timescales. Near to the critical point the model obeys scaling relations, with exponents which we derive numerically for a one-dimensional system. We further describe how the model can be related to the glass model of Bouchaud [{\em J. Phys. I France {\bf 2}, 1705 (1992)}], and we use this insight to comment on the usual assumption of stationarity in the Bak-Sneppen model. Finally, we propose a general definition of self-organised criticality which is in partial agreement with other recent definitions.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; differences to previous work clarified. To appear in EPJ

Codes, Cultures, Chaos, and Champions: Common Features of Legal Codification Experiences in China, Europe, and North America

What are the key conditions and factors that contribute to a successful effort within a political unit to create a new legal code? This article builds of the existing "comparative codification" literature by examining that question in the context of three very different legal traditions: dynastic Chinese law, European civil law, and North American common law. Drawing on nine important codification experiences-four from China, two from Europe and three from North American-the author posits that three conditions must exist in a legal system for codification to occur: (i) that written law is generally regarded favorably as a means of ordering society; (ii) that the top political authority in the society is powerful enough to impose a code; and (iii) that such top political authority is eager to champion the cause of codification. Assuming these three necessary conditions are present, several key contributing factors-for example, cultural change and legal chaos-further augur in favor of codification. The author identifies five such factors and illustrates their importance in each of the nine codification experiences. The article concludes with some observations about (i) the value of including traditional Chinese law in comparative codification studies and (ii) the interplay between the concentration of political power (lacking, for example, in the international legal system) and the likelihood of legal codification