Svend Erik Larsen

The Lisbon earthquake and the scientific turn in Kant's philosophy

In contrast to other previous and later disasters the Lisbon earthquake was more than a local disaster that changed the life of the Portuguese population and later became subject to the merciless oblivion of history. This cataclysm left lasting traces in European science, social life, religion and philosophy. The material effects were rapidly felt all over Europe, also affecting the economy and the whole conception of how humans should think and act in a world where such events occurred. This paper follows the change in Immanuel Kants philosophy after the earthquake based on the thesis that this event contributed fundamentally to the formation of Kants mature philosophy and its paradigmatic status in European thought until the present day.

Landscape, identity and literature

Summary The article discusses the landscape as initially being part and parcel of Gods creation, and also territory within boundaries defined by law. This subsequently led to the development of a national identity firmly rooted in the soil. The author regards the functions of the national landscape as providing a common unity to people and place, promoting their common origin, and finally naturalizing both unity and origin. Special reference is made to Isak Dinesens Out of Africa and Winters Tales as furnishing examples of the meaning of the landscape, and the meaning in the landscape. Structures in the landscape such as the social structure, the sexual structure and the structure of symbolic values are scrutinized. In conclusion, the author poses the question as to whether a national identity is indeed possible without a national landscape.

“To See Things for the First Time”: Before and After Ecocriticism

Summary Ecocriticism has often been blamed to be too entangled with the literatures and the critical and political agendas of the Anglo-American world, and to be historically and aesthetically reductive inasmuch as its favourite texts are from the nineteenth and twentieth century dealing explicitly in motives, imagery and descriptions of the natural environment, more often than not in a troubled relationship with human activity. As human interaction with nature is an issue universally present in literatures across historical and geographical boundaries, these constraints have to be removed in order for ecocriticism to progress. The paper suggests some ways to do so. It introduces a definition with a focus on the cultural processes literature is engaged in, and not on the specific texts or ideological agendas. It is a criticism concerned with a basic cultural boundary through literature, the boundary between humans and nature. Moreover, it proposes a notion, a boundary marker, as a methodological support for textual analysis, and points to the importance of a broader historical view on the concepts used. Finally it uses a broad concept of dialogue as textual dynamics on all levels of the texts as a guideline for the analytical practice, which is finally carried out with Bruce Chatwins The Songlines ([1987]2005) and Patrick Whites Voss ([1957]1994) as the textual basis.Summary Ecocriticism has often been blamed to be too entangled with the literatures and the critical and political agendas of the Anglo-American world, and to be historically and aesthetically reductive inasmuch as its favourite texts are from the nineteenth and twentieth century dealing explicitly in motives, imagery and descriptions of the natural environment, more often than not in a troubled relationship with human activity. As human interaction with nature is an issue universally present in literatures across historical and geographical boundaries, these constraints have to be removed in order for ecocriticism to progress. The paper suggests some ways to do so. It introduces a definition with a focus on the cultural processes literature is engaged in, and not on the specific texts or ideological agendas. It is a criticism concerned with a basic cultural boundary through literature, the boundary between humans and nature. Moreover, it proposes a notion, a boundary marker, as a methodological support f...

Landscape, Identity, and War

This paper investigates the role of the landscape in relation to war as articulated in literature from antiquity to the present day. It is the same story as the story of identity creation, but looked upon from the reverse side. Being both the object of war as battlefield, and the subject of war as confirmation of identity, the landscape of war is not just a ruined and bare piece of destructed nature, but a complex imaginative and symbolic entity that questions our way of defining and grounding identity through place—question of the highest significance in a cultural epoch where placeness is at the center of the cultural debate.

Hope for successful xenografting by immunosuppression with monoclonal antibody against CD4, total lymphoid irradiation and cyclosporine: six months' survival of hamster heart transplanted into rat

Hamster hearts were transplanted to rats, and the effects of combinations of total lymphoid irradiation (TLI), cyclophosphamide, cyclosporine A (CyA) and monoclonal antibodies (MAB) were investigated. Controls not immunosuppressed rejected their xenograft in 3 to 5 days, while combination immunosuppression including MABs against CD4 or IL-2-receptors extended graft survival significantly. In one case, the graft was still functioning 180 days after transplantation, which is the longest survival seen in this model. The use of specific MABs may open a new era for both xeno- and allo-transplantation.

Survival, function, morphology and serological aspects of rat renal allografts. Effect of short‐term treatment with cyclosporine A, anti‐CD4 and anti‐interleukin‐2 receptor monoclonal antibodies

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of short‐term treatment with cyclosporine A (CyA) combined with anti‐CD4 (OX‐38) and anti‐interleukin‐2 receptor (OX‐39) monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) on graft survival, graft function, morphology, and anti‐donor antibody levels in a BN‐to‐LEW rat kidney transplantation model. Spontaneous rejection occurred at 9.3 days (range 9–10 d). Administration of CyA (12.5 mg/kg/d) for 14 days prolonged graft survival to 33 days (range 23–40 d, P<0.02). Supplementing with OX‐38 and OX‐39 100 μg/kg/d, given i.p. from days 0 to 7, further prolonged graft survival to 70 days (range 38‐> 100 d, P<0.02 vs controls and CyA group). One of seven recipients had good graft function for more than 100 days. A three‐fold increase of the MAb dosage did not improve mean graft survival (53.5 d), but three of eight recipients had well functioning grafts for > 100 days. Kidney function was characterized by reduced creatinine clearance, also in the recipients with long‐term graft survival, and a defect in concentrating urine creatinine with subsequent pronounced increase in urinary output. Graft histology showed a complex pattern of interstitial alterations including mononuclear cell infiltration, fibrosis, tubular atrophy and vascular damage with intimal/endothelial cell hyperplasia and perivascular inflammation. In nine of 10 MAb‐treated recipients with graft survival > 60 days, granular deposits of immunoglobulins and C3 were found by immunofluorescence microscopy (IFM). The deposits were localized in the glomerular capillaries and mesangium. IFM in MAb‐treated control animals could not demonstrate any deposits. Flow cytometric evaluation of posttransplant serum samples against donor target cells showed increasing amounts of anti‐donor antibodies until the time of rejection, while recipients with long‐term graft function had moderately positive cross‐matches up to two months after transplantation. Hereafter antibody titres decreased and cross‐matches at the time of sacrifice were again negative. The morphological findings and the flow cytometric cross‐match results seem to indicate a postponed antibody‐mediated type of rejection. The reason why some kidney recipients showed decreasing antibody titres and stable long‐term graft function is unclear.

Nature On the Move: Meanings of Nature in Contemporary Culture

n Nature’s rrtetropolis, William Cronon argues that the ’long dialogue between the Iplace we call city and the place we call country’1 is the key to understanding the relation between society and nature in American culture. Cronon is discomforted by the fact that material phenomena integrated in cultural processes are no longer just material: although he takes for granted that we are dealing with spatial locations, he has to use a metaphor (’dialogue’) to characterize their interaction and to admit that their semiotic denomination (’we call’) is essential to their function in the cultural process. Here, I investigate how this dialogue defines and integrates nature in today’s cultural practice. Some pages earlier Cronon relates his interpretative difficulty with the unavoidably contradictory character of the word ’nature’, apologizing that its ambiguities cannot, should not, be suppressed. Even the distinction between the so-called ’first’ or prehuman and the ’second’ or culturally formed nature remains ambiguous. Cronon suggests an explanation:

Is nature really natural

Abstract The paper argues that nature is basically cultural, but that nature does not occupy a fixed place in the human cultural universe. It may be a mental construct in the sciences or in the arts, an empirical aspect of working process or scientific investigation, a philosophical, religious or mythological presupposition for our existence, or part of a discursive rhetoric concerning socially coded naturalness. In each case, humans have been inextricably linked to their natural conditions throughout history. One consequence is that the categories which determine our practical and mental approach to nature are products of culture. Another is that although nature is an indispensable part of culture, nature will still be nature without our culture.

Introduction to the Special Section on Knowledge Management in Postmodern Society

This introductory essay contextualizes and meditates on the three articles—Bhattacharya, Day, and Waller—presented in this special section on “Knowledge Management in Postmodern Society.” In the process it reflects on following points: (1) the capacity the university had in the past to incorporate the irregular and its loss in the contemporary university, (2) the devaluation of humanities and social sciences because of the reduction of the narrative as well as the reflective and critical thinking to mere doxa, (3) the competition from mass media on universitys traditional role in knowledge dissemination and the building of the public sphere, (4) the oscillation of academy between Taylorism and post-Taylorism, (5) the possible role students can play in overcoming crisis faced by the university, and (6) the evolution of the binomial writing/reading in the shift to digitalization and the information society.

History: changing the forms or forming the changes?

Change in European cultural history has, for a long period, been discussed through two interrelated notions, that of science and that of history. This paper traces the various stages of this discussion from Antiquity to the present day from the point of view of history. Two reoccurring and paradigmatic characters of mythological descent, Odysseus and Prometheus, illustrate how history as a realm for human responsibility and future planning has established itself as a specific European construct, with the 18th century as its final breakthrough in practical and ideological terms. A close analysis of Leonardo da Vincis drawing the Vitruvian Man, in statu nascendi , shows how the individual human being carrying the obligations and the promises of this history, is envisioned. The final remarks underline the importance of scientific knowledge in the concrete shaping of this responsibility and a plea for an increased cooperation across the disciplines.