Historical mathematics in the French eighteenth century

At least since the seventeenth century, the strange combination of epistemological certainty and ontological power that characterizes mathematics has made it a major focus of philosophical, social, and cultural negotiation. In the eighteenth century, all of these factors were at play as mathematical thinkers struggled to assimilate and extend the analysis they had inherited from the seventeenth century. A combination of educational convictions and historical assumptions supported a humanistic mathematics essentially defined by its flexibility and breadth. This mathematics was an expression of l'esprit humain, which was unfolding in a progressive historical narrative. The French Revolution dramatically altered the historical and educational landscapes that had supported this eighteenth-century approach, and within thirty years Augustin Louis Cauchy had radically reconceptualized and restructured mathematics to be rigorous rather than narrative.     

The understanding of monsters at the Royal Society in the first half of the eighteenth century

In tune with an Enlightenment sensibility that focused on the search for order and regularities, monsters were given a marginal position in eighteenth-century medical works. By contrast, they had an important place at the Royal Society during the second half of the century. This article first focuses on the general interest in monsters within the context of the natural historical agenda and corporate activity of the Society and then addresses the medical understanding of monsters by members of the Society. Finally, it discusses some of the moral and social implications of their medicalization in eighteenth century England.     

二十一世纪西藏电力持续发展的思考

西藏的电力事业建设自建国以来取得了很大的成绩，但与全国其它省市同行业相比还存在较大的差距。本文就目前西藏电力行业影响、制约电力事业发展的因素作浅显的分析，并提出解决的办法。     

Going dark: anonymising technology in cyberspace

Anonymising technologies are cyber-tools that protect people from online surveillance, hiding who they are, what information they have stored and what websites they are looking at. Whether it is anonymising online activity through ‘TOR’ and its onion routing, 256-bit encryption on communications sent or smart phone auto-deletes, the user’s identity and activity is protected from the watchful eyes of the intelligence community. This represents a clear challenge to intelligence actors as it prevents them access to information that many would argue plays a vital part in locating and preventing threats from being realised. Moreover, such technology offers more than ordinary information protections as it erects ‘warrant-proof’ spaces, technological black boxes that no matter what some authority might deem as being legitimately searchable is protected to the extent that there are very limited or non-existent means of forcing oneself in. However, it will be argued here that not only is using such anonymising technology and its extra layer of protection people’s right, but that it is ethically mandatory. That is, due to the en masse surveillance—from both governments and corporations—coupled with people’s limited awareness and ability to comprehend such data collections, anonymising technology should be built into the fabric of cyberspace to provide a minimal set of protections over people’s information, and in doing so force the intelligence community to develop more targeted forms of data collection.     

党的十八大以来的海洋生态保护政策选择

我国党的十八大明确提出建设“海洋强国”战略目标,实施海洋生态保护对海洋生态文明建设具有重要的战略意义.当前我国海洋生态面临着近海污染严重、海岸面积缩减、典型生态系统退化、生态环境灾害频发、海岛开发秩序混乱等问题,在阐述中共十八大以来我国针对海洋生态问题提出的各项海洋生态保护政策的同时,从政府系统、企业系统、民众系统和行业系统等角度提出进一步推进海洋生态保护的政策取向.     

Rethinking the ownership of information in the 21st century: Ethical implications

This paper discusses basic concepts and recentdevelopments in intellectual property ownership in theUnited States. Various philosophical arguments havepreviously been put forward to support the creation andmaintenance of intellectual property systems. However, in an age of information, access toinformation is a critical need and should beguaranteed for every citizen. Any right of controlover the information, adopted as an incentive toencourage creation and distribution of intellectualproperty, should be subservient to an overriding needto ensure access to the information. The principlesunderlying intellectual property regimes in the UnitedStates recognize and embody this. In addition, thephilosophical/ethical dimensions of this debate couldalso be structured to support this attitude as well. Intellectual property is fast becoming digitalproperty. New technologies allow owners to extendtheir control of both legitimate uses and misuses ofthe intellectual property. Recent trends demonstratethat the access principle has not always beenparamount in judicial or legislative applications. Thetrend rather is to allow a proprietarianism factor todominate the analysis. Finally, several principles areforwarded which would assist adjudicators and policymakers in reaffirming the basic purpose of theintellectual property law, which is to benefit thepublic at large.     

知识:21世纪企业竞争优势之根本

关于企业竞争优势的根源,无论是外生论还是内生论都有其内在缺陷。企业的竞争优势归根结底来自于企业所拥有的知识。文章从分析企业竞争优势的不同观点入手,对企业的竞争优势进行了经济学阐释和知识解析,得出知识是企业竞争优势之根本的结论,并且论述了知识管理与学习型组织相结合是企业管理知识的最佳途径。     

Parents and children: ideas of heredity in the 19th century

The concept of heredity played a powerful role in structuring 19th-century debates over sickness, morality, class, race, education, social change and evolution. But there was very little agreement as to which qualities were heritable and how new hereditary variants were acquired. In consequence, notions of heredity existed in a wide variety of forms, expressing anything from extreme determinism and a belief in the incorrigibility of individuals, social and racial groups, to unleavened optimism, and a faith in ultimate human perfectibility. This article explores these rich hereditarian discourses to convey an impression of a century that was at least as preoccupied with the concept of biological inheritance as we are today.