Laying Aside Vanities: Neil C. Macdonald and the Nonpartisan League

The Nonpartisan League was an agrarian political movement founded in North Dakota in the early twentieth century. The League was characterized by its radical rurally-minded platform and its passionate leadership. Neil C. Macdonald, the League nominee for Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1916, was one of the leaders, but was voted out of office in 1918 before the generally accepted peak of the Nonpartisan League. Very little Nonpartisan League scholarship has included Macdonald and this work examines Neil Macdonald and his understated importance in the study of the Nonpartisan League. In this examination, Macdonald proves to be a valuable figure in the study of the Nonpartisan League and its downfall

The American Society of Equity: The Rise and Fall of a Farmer\u27s Organization

Graduate Textual or Investigativ

A Theory Kit for World History

This report presents a “kit” of theories regarding major processes in human history formed into a whole, a “theory kit”, with the aim to understand how these processes unfold over thousands of years. The theory kit has an underlying fundamental theoretical approach concerning dialectical, contradictory, processes as a core of the complex matrix that shapes human history. In the kit, history is presented in three spheres that are given equal importance: material culture, social structure and societal mentality. An enigma in world history is the common rhythm: different parts of the world tend to move at the same time and in the same direction. The claim here is that the enormous interacting complexity is one explanation of this relative unity in change. In the theory kit a number of issues are discussed, such as: Axial Ages, class struggle, empires, expansion-stagnation-crisis, agricultural world systems, technological complex(es), mentality world systems, invention-innovation

The Third Power : James A. Everitt and the American Society of Equity

The late 19th century marked a golden age for farmers’ movements in the United States. Crushing debt, deflation, increased urbanization, and industrial acceleration generated much discontent in America’s agricultural communities, and unleashed “a Populist moment” of farmer protest and organization. While the early 20th century witnessed significant economic improvement, farm organizations continued to operate and, in some cases, even thrived. Established in 1902 by seed merchant and newspaper editor James A. Everitt of Indiana, the American Society of Equity was one of the first major farmer’s movements founded in the twentieth century and helped to spread the concept of cooperative action to farmers across the nation. Everitt believed farmers and their interests represented “the Third Power” in the American economy and that by organizing they could become more powerful than labor or industry. By 1906, the Equity reported almost three thousand local unions including unions in almost every state as well as nearly two hundred county unions and thirteen state unions. Internal division and outside pressures, however, contributed to the organization’s decline into the 1910s. By the 1920s, the Equity—while continuing to exist in some regions— faded as a national force. Outside of a flurry of scholarship in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Equity achieves only brief mentions in the histories of its successors, suffering from a lack of dedicated scholarship. By examining Everitt and the rise and decline of the Equity, the original research compiled here seeks to bridge the agrarian movements the late nineteenth century with the origins of modern farm organizations in the Midwest

From Cambridge Keynesian to Institutional Economist: The Unnoticed Contributions of Robert Neild

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Robert Neild (born 1924) has made a major contribution to economics and to peace studies. This paper provides a brief sketch of Neild’s life and work. While noting his research in economic policy and peace studies, this essay devotes more attention to his largely-unnoticed contributions to institutional and evolutionary economics since 1984. These are important in their own right, but they are especially notable because Cambridge heterodox economists have been devoted mainly to other approaches, including Marxism and post-Keynesianism. Neild’s distinctive contribution is partly explained by his closeness to both Nicholas Kaldor and Gunnar Myrdal. Myrdal made explicit his adherence to the original American institutionalism: Neild extended that link to Cambridge.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Some theoretical and numerical aspects of the N-body problem

The N-body problem has been studied for many centuries and is still of interest in contemporary science. A lot of effort has gone into solving this problem but it's unlikely that a general solution will be found with the mathematical tools we have today. We review some of the progress that has been made over the centuries in solving it. We take a look at the first integrals, existence of solutions and where singularities can occur. We solve the two body problem and take a look at the special case of central configurations. We find all the possible three-body central configurations, which are known as Euler's and Lagrange's solutions. When analytic solutions are missing it is natural to use numerical methods. We implement and compare four numerical solvers for differential equations: Euler's method, Heun's method, the classical fourth-order Runge-Kutta scheme and Störmer-Verlet. Comparison of accuracy is made using the known solutions discussed in the previous parts of this thesis.The famous physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton formulated the universal gravitation theory about 300 years ago. This theory has allowed scientists to make calculations in order to predict movement of objects under the influence of gravitational force. In astronomy the movement of planets and asteroids can be formulated as a mathematical equation based on Newton's laws of gravitation. The equation describes how a force changes the speed and direction of the moving particles in space. In order to predict a future location one needs to solve this equation. This is referred to as the N-body problem. Still today the general problem is considered unsolved. In this thesis we will consider solutions to special cases of the problem such as when there are only two bodies. We will also take a look at numerical methods that can be used when analytical solutions don't exist