| Back to main crosstalk page |
Academic disciplines are a recent creation, dating back to the 1850s. Most chairs of what today we call "human sciences" or "Humanities" are a direct product of a nineteenth-century academic environment. The talk seeks to examine how the Humanities, so comprehensive in their classical definition, became compartmentalised in nineteenth-century France, and how the methodology used to validate human studies as sciences left a deep mark in today's philosophy of human sciences. Looking at the birth of the chairs of philology, linguistics, Orientalism, literary criticism and history in the Parisian academia, it will approach national similarities and differences between Germany, France and Italy in regards to the creation of their chairs of Humanities in the 1850's-1880's.
What happens when an international state border appears where it never used to exist, dividing villages, transport systems and water-supplies in an irrigation-dependent region? This talk engages these questions by looking at the way in which social relations in Central Asia's Ferghana valley, where Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan meet, have been impacted by the establishment of a border regime after independence. Based on ethnographic research and interviews with villagers, traders, border guards and conflictologists working in the borderlands, the talk questions conventional analyses of 'ethnic conflict' in the Ferghana valley by looking at the intersection of resource-distribution, corruption and trade for understanding the dynamics of cooperation and conflict in the region.
Greek palimpsests are parchment manuscripts that have at least two layers of texts, one on the top of another. Stories of their production and circulation are often intricate. The Archimedes manuscript was written in the 10th century Constantinople, reused in the 12-13th century for a prayer book, was discovered in a library in Jerusalem, hidden for the most of the 20th century in Paris, and sold to the USA. Now, it turns out that it preserves an unknown forensic speech by a famous Greek orator.
Since the beginning of the scientific study of brain function in 18th and 19th century, language has played a crucial role in the formation of concepts, formulation of arguments and development of theories. Interestingly, evidence from patients with language dysfunction caused by brain damage (aphasia) has often been used to support contradicting views and mutually exclusive models. I will give an overview of the linguistic symptoms occurring in diseases traditionally considered as affecting predominantly the motor system, such as Motor Neuron Disease or atypical parkinsonian syndromes. I will argue that these observations pose a challenge to the postulate of an autonomous, inherited language module. I will then discuss the implications in the broader context of the contemporary understanding of cognition in general and language in particular. My talk will have several cross-references to previous crosstalks, in particular those by John Steele, Faraneh Vargha-Khadem and Friedemann Pulvermueller.
Understanding spoken language, for most people, is as easy as breathing - speech sounds are 'translated' into words and their meanings are retrieved automatically, without the listener being aware of the process. This ease of comprehension is deceptive: speech sounds are notoriously variable and complex, and it is still not possible to make a machine that recognises words as well as humans do. Furthermore, speech perception must require many stages of processing as the incoming signal is analyzed, speech-relevant aspects extracted and mapped onto linguistic units (such as phonemes or syllables) and these recombined again into words and phrases. How does the human brain recognize speech so easily, and how does it cope with background noise and variable accents with such apparent ease? I have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (a non-invasive technique used to study 'the brain at work') to investigate the brain areas involved in transforming spoken sound into language, and also how the brain is able to compensate when comprehension is made difficult (by distorting the speech or presenting it against a noisy background).
Two of the most influential theologians of the English Reformation were not English speakers, and one of them never set foot on English soil. Heinrich Bullinger, leader of the Reformation in Zurich from 1531 until his death in 1575, was mentor to some of the key figures of the Edwardine and Elizabethan Church, and played host to a small army of the Marian exiles. Peter Martyr Vermigli, a reformer hailng originally from Florence, came from Strasbourg to Oxford in 1548 at the invitation of Thomas Cranmer. By virtue of their widely acknowledged 'auctoritas', Bullinger and Vermigli exercised decisive influence on the course of the Reformation in England from the 1540s through the end of the sixteenth century.
Moving to music is an instinctive, often involuntary activity. Sometimes it is even unconscious--one may be entirely focussed on another activity, and then become aware of tapping a toe in time to background music. In music there are many non-temporal cues as to where the beat is (presence of a drum line, playing notes louder on the beat, etc), but humans still find a beat in rhythm patterns that have none of these cues. This talk will present research on how humans find the beat without these extra cues, and how being able to detect a beat influences their performance of different types of rhythms. Additional research will be presented that examines if motor areas in the brain are critical to perception of a beat, and if increased activity in certain motor areas may be part of the reason we tend to tap along. In addition, I will discuss whether musicians' brain responses to beat-perception differ from that of non-musicians, and how damage to the brain can affect rhythmic abilities.
The talk highlights the history, teachings and religious practice of a nowadays little known religion and culture, Zoroastrianism. As the official creed of mighty Persian Empires, Zoroastrianism influenced the religious ideas of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It survives to the present day as the faith of small but influential minorities in Iran, India and diaspora communities around the globe.
It is a scenario familiar to anyone with an interest in contemporary international politics: an Intelligence Community trying to make do with fragmentary and incomplete evidence, politicians pushing for answers, and an apparent intelligence failure leading to strategic and political crisis. Unlike Iraq, however, this crisis was played out in secret. The public did not even begin to hear about it until the first documents were released in 1999, and the true extent of what happened is only now being realised. Nonetheless, the so-called 'SLOC Interdiction Orthodoxy' seems to have had wide-ranging consequences far beyond the secret world in which it had its birth. This talk will trace its curious origins and history, and touch upon how it effected the shape of the naval and strategic history of the Cold War.
Persian fable books, originating from a Pahlavi translation from a Sanskrit original work, have had a long and enormously successful history in the classical Persian and Islamic world. They have been translated numerous times, and have spread in all directions over the Ancient world. However, nowadays their tales are mostly considered as mere amusing "Children stories". The purpose of this talk is to analyse some of these fables in order to understand their use and success.
Different languages offer very different strategies to classify their words. Accordingly, speakers of different languages are likely to develop diverging strategies to classify and process the words. Results from behavioral experiments on Hebrew, Dutch, and English speakers as well as Dutch-English late bilinguals highlight the importance of a language's morphological structure for the lexical representations of its speakers. Moreover, these morphological influences extend into the conceptual representations built by speakers, partially in line with the recent revival of the traditionally dismissed Whorf-Sapir hypothesis: The structure and lexicon of one's language influences how one perceives and conceptualizes the world, and it does so in a systematic way.
JISLAM: The merging of Judaism and Islam in the medieval world
Wout Jac. van Bekkum (Wolfson College)
2 December 2004
Present conflicts in the Middle East obscure the history of Islamic and Judaic culture. Long ago a group of Jews accepted Islamic rationalism to shape a new identity and community. They were the Karaites, and their scientific activities threatened a Judaism dominated by the rabbis. This lecture discusses the history and culture of the Karaites, recently culled from Russian sources in Arabic and Hebrew. Does the Karaite voice from the past have something to say about modern (mis-)understandings in the Middle East?
Magic with paper: Topology in 40 minutes
Tadashi Tokieda (Trinity Hall)
25 November 2004
Would you like to see some magic with paper?
Topology is the old, huge, and active area of mathematics where we calculate with pictures rather than with numbers. I -- and you! -- will fold, crumple, cut, and paste paper in curious ways. I thereby hope to convey how different topology is from the sort of algebra and calculus that most of us think of as mathematics.
The gift of speech: FOXP2 and the uniqueness of
humans
Faraneh Vargha Khadem
(UCL)
8 pm, 19 October 2004
After the legendary Canadian/Pacific neurologist John Steele, who spoke to us in June we are very fortunate to have won Faraneh Vargha Khadem to be our first speaker of this term. She has conducted important research in several areas of cognitive neuroscience, but recently she has been probably best known for her work with the KE family, which has become (partly due to the discovery of the FOXP2 gene) one of the most discussed cases in the long-standing debate about the genetic and the environmental contribution to our language faculty. As the person who has examined herself many members of this family she is certainly best suited to give the most direct and balanced account of the current debate.
In 2003 Professor Vargha Khadem was elected the Professional of the Year in the Asian Women of Achievement Awards.
From Canada to the Pacific: What can we learn from the
study of rare neurological disorders?
John Steele
(Guam Island)
8 pm, 29 June 2004
How the brain works (and what Pinker won't tell
you): The connectionist account
Tim Rogers (MRC - Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit)
8 June 2004
Since about the 1950's, the human mind has been viewed by many philosophers and scientists as a kind of natural computer: a database of facts or propositions, coupled with a system of rules for determining how said propositions may be retrieved and combined to support inference, inductive reasoning, and other remarkable human abilities. One consequence of the mind-as-computer metaphor has been to keep the science of mind at a remove from the rest of the natural sciences. The argument is as follows: just as one can program a computer without much knowledge of micro-electronics, so too might one divine the workings of the mind without worrying about the niggling details of neurobiology. Thus cognitive psychology must aim to provide a full description of the so-called language of thought---that is, the system of rules and the database of propositions that together support human cognition---which can be articulated without reference to the biological processes that govern the workings of the brain.
This view, recently popularised by Stephen Pinker in his book "How the Mind Works," has been the predominating theoretical framework for cognitive psychology for almost 6 decades, but this is beginning to change. I will describe an alternative theoretical framework, alternately known as the "connectionist," "neural network," or "parallel distributed processing" approach, which has its roots in neurobiological research conducted in the early 20th century. The central tenet of the connectionist approach is that cognitive abilities emerge from the propagation of electrical signals among neurons in the brain---thus to understand the mind, it is necessary to understand first the biological mechanisms that govern this propagation of activity, and second how the propagation of activation amongst systems of neurons can give rise to cognitive abilities. In my talk I will briefly describe how neurons communicate in the brain; how learning can be viewed as adjustments to the strengths of the connections among neurons; and how these processes can be simulated on the computer. I will then illustrate how a theory constructed on connectionist principles can offer new insights into a fundamental human cognitive ability: our ability to comprehend spoken language.
Religion and politics in contemporary India
Rajesh Joshi (BBC, London)
18 May 2004
Religious passions were not whipped up during the recent general election in India. Has the use of religion as a political tool become a thing of the past? Or is it just a tactical retreat? I will discuss the growth of the Hindutva movement in the light of above questions.
Iraq: One year on
Glen Rangwala (Newnham College)
20 Apr 2004
With two months until the projected formal handover of power in Iraq and amidst violence and political fragmentation, I will draw upon my recent visits to Baghdad, Falluja, and Tikrit to discuss why developments have not matched political leaders' expectations.
Are the on-going problems due to a failure of policy-makers since April 2003, or were they inevitable? What paths might Iraq take in the next few years? What does the Iraq war indicate about politics and political decision making in the countries that launched the war?
Chassidim and Franciscans: Jewish and Christian
charismatic movements
Peter Drag (Center for Jewish-Christian Relations)
17 Feb 2004
The Franciscans and the Chassidim were revolutionary in the best sense of the word. In their approach to the Holy One, they emphasised joy and simplicity, peace and fellowship, and, above these, dedication to and zeal for the Almighty. This zeal brought a new spirituality to their members. The ethical and mystical dimensions grew and left their mark on both traditions to this day.
Founding and running a free school
Achim Jung (Birmingham University)
19 Feb 2004
I was deeply involved in founding and running the "Freie Comenius Schule" in Darmstadt, Germany, and my oldest daughter spent over three years in it. The word "frei" here refers to being pedagogically independent rather than free of cost.
I first introduce "Reformschulbewegung", a German tradition of
alternative education little known in England. It flourished in the
1920s and has roots in the 19th century, for example Froebel's
"Kindergarten". Then I explain the eclectic pedagogy of the Comenius
Schule, which is named after the educational reformer
Jan Amos
Comenius (born 1592). The school's concept has changed little over
the nearly 20 years of its existence (so perhaps it has become
dogmatic itself?).
Religion, Nation and Identity: Iranians in
London
Kathryn Spellman (Birkbeck College, London)
9 Dec 2003
Roughly 75,000 Iranians emigrated to Britain due to the 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Figuring out how to live as an Iranian Muslim in London proved difficult when feeling estranged from the Islam of the Iranian regime and from the debates about Muslim integration into British society. I will touch on religious activities that have emerged in response, such as women-only religious gatherings and Sufism, and show how religious practices have been maintained and reshaped by the circumstances of the Iranian immigrants.
Linguistic diversity: What we can learn from
Australian Aboriginal languages
Eva Schultze-Berndt (SOAS, London)
11 Dec 2003
Why do linguists spend years studying languages spoken by only a few hundred? Using Australian Aboriginal languages, I will discuss the fascinating diversity of human languages. These languages, most of them severely endangered, undermine widely held beliefs about human language: that case markers cannot express tense, or that every language has subjects and a large class of verbs.
Does your drum speak English? Cross-cultural studies of
music cognition
Tommi Himberg (Faculty of Music)
25 Nov 2003
Cognitive musicology studies the basis of our musical abilities: the perception, processing, and production of music. Almost all these studies are conducted in the "Western" world with Western participants using theoretical constructs based on Western music. Yet the researchers often claim that their findings are universal. On the other hand, ethnomusicology, the study of music cultures, is often descriptive and does not strive for results that allow cross-cultural comparisons.
POSTPONED! (speaker is ill)
Linguistic diversity: What we can learn from
Australian Aboriginal languages
Eva Schultze-Berndt (SOAS, London)
11 Nov 2003
Why do linguists spend years studying languages spoken by only a few hundred? Using Australian Aboriginal languages, I will discuss the fascinating diversity of human languages. These languages, most of them severely endangered, undermine widely held beliefs about human language: that case markers cannot express tense, or that every language has subjects and a large class of verbs.
Perception, concepts, and use of time among the
Mapuche Indians
Tristan Bekinschtein (Buenos-Aires)
Wednesday, 8 pm, 23 July 2003
Using bioanthropological studies, I will discuss the perception of time, the conceptions of time, and the relation between biological time and cultural time. I will use the Mapuches to illustrate the relationship between biology and culture in humans.
Can science give a full account of
consciousness?
Adam Zeman (consultant neurologist, Edinburgh)
Tuesday, 8 pm, 3 June 2003
Consciousness is an ambiguous term, encompassing wakefulness, awareness, and its close relation, self-awareness. A century of work in neuroscience and neuropsychology has explored their mechanisms, functions and evolutionary history, and taught us a great deal. I shall sketch our current scientific understanding of the states and contents of consciousness, before asking whether science will ever deliver an entirely satisfying explanation of why we are conscious. Approaching this question will bring us full circle to the concept of consciousness, as the answer must depend on what we think consciousness is.
Shipwreck chivalry: A myth of national
identity? (full text)
Lucy Delap (King's College)
Tuesday, 8 pm, 6 May 2003
I examine the nineteenth and early twentieth century revival in Britain of chivalry at sea, giving a history to the `eternal law of the sea': in shipwrecks put `women and children first'. For most of the nineteenth century, chivalry had been organised around national identity and around class and race divisions between men. As a code, it justified the control of working class or foreign sailors by their class superiors. As a fable, it was emblematic of the need to exclude plebeian men and imperial subjects from political rights.
At the turn of the century, as working-class sailors became more threatening, they were increasingly perceived as moblike and even dangerously feminised. Codes of chivalry and thus of control became shriller and more insisted upon. However, they could no longer function as before to divide men from men because, for a brief historical moment, gender difference became more troubling than class.
For Edwardians, the new political claims of women generated a new shipwreck narrative, one in which all men, and not merely ruling class men, would put women first. The 1912 Titanic disaster is a transition between old and new bases for chivalry. After the Great War, chivalry remained but with new emphases speaking to the concerns of interwar political argument.
Drosophila and us
Laurent Seugnet (Zoology)
Tuesday, 8 pm, 8 April 2003
The fruit fly (Drosophila Melanogaster), the favourite of geneticists for a century, seems remote from us. However, we share with it complex biology from the common ancestor of most animals, roughly 600 million years ago. The animal kingdom is therefore more united than we previously thought. I will present evidence for this idea and discuss why it matters.
The alliance of fundamentalisms
Glen Rangwala (Newnham College)
Tuesday, 8 pm, 11 March 2003
Among those seeking to oust the Iraqi dictactorship, three groups can be classified as "fundamentalist": one, the US Christian right, who dominate the public argument for war; two, the neoconservative Zionists, who have won the battle within the US administration for Middle East policy and for how Iraq will be governed; and three, armed Shi'a Islamist groups, who have been given a primary role in toppling the Iraqi regime and expect a political payoff.
I will outline how these groups came to their preeminence, and why they fit together now. As each group attempts to remake the Middle East in its own image, what are the longer-term prospects for and consequences of this alliance?
How to tame a mountain? Buddhism and Shamanism in Inner
Asia
Agnieszka Halemba (Department of Social Anthropology)
Tuesday, 8 pm, 4 March 2003
I will show the complex interaction between Buddhism and Shamanism in an oboo ritual as performed among the Telengits. The Telengits are an ethnic group in the Republic of Altai, part of the Russian Federation. The oboo ceremony, one of the most widespread rituals in Inner Asia, is usually conducted next to a sacred mountain. Where Buddhism is strong or dominant, lamas usually conduct oboo rituals, leaving more individual, less fixed ceremonies to the shamans.
I will focus on several failed attempts to recreate the oboo ritual after the collapse of the Soviet Union and discuss the opposition between Buddhism and Shamanism in the context of the contemporary nation-building in Altai. In this context Buddhism stands for an institutionalised religion based on authority of church and its hierarchy, with dogmas that can be clearly defined and evoked and cosmology that can be known, studied, written down and interpreted. Shamanism, by contrast, is based on the idea of movement and changeability, without dogmatic knowledge and without a stable, easy to trace cosmology. It is based on the individual experience of spiritual world(s), often mediated through spiritual specialists but also accessible for laymen.
Giving is receiving
Richard Barbrook
(Hypermedia Research Centre, University of
Westminster)
Tuesday, 8 pm, 11 February 2003
Information is for sharing not for selling. During the late-1990s dotcom boom, experts claimed that the Net was a global electronic marketplace where every piece of information would be a commodity. Yet a most striking feature of the Net is its ubiquitous gift economy. We contribute our time and effort to the hi-tech gift economy because contributing is in our self-interest: however much of our own work we give away, we will always get more information in return from all the other people on the network. The gift economy of the Net is not just a method of copying commercially available media. It also enables us to publish our own ideas without prior approval. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Net is inspiring novel forms of expression that reflect its own technical protocols and social mores.
Crosstalk party: Peter Wang's farewell
Saturday, 7-11pm, 25 January 2003
Peter Wang, who ran Crosstalk for many, many years, is returning to the land of the free. Come wish him bon voyage! Combined with an early birthday party for Peter, Gloria Pungetti, Ganesh Ayalvadi, Luca Palombi, and other less famous people...Bring friends, music, and something to eat or drink!
Romani/Gypsy Voice in World Politics: Music of the future
or utopia?
Ilona Klimova (Centre for International Studies)
Tuesday, 8 pm, 21 January 2003
We often think of the Roma (Gypsies) as apolitical people. I aim to correct this misperception. The Roma's attempts to gain a voice in world politics are as old as international institutions themselves. I analyse the Romani's attempts, through the United Nations (UN) system, to become an actor in world politics. I introduce the Romani movement, its history, goals, global activities, and influence, and discuss the influence of the UN system on the organisation of the movement.