Akadeemia
Eurozine
Akadeemia
2010-12-28
Abstracts for Akadeemia 12/2010
Taivo Liiva
On the birth of an epoch under the baton of Isaac Newton
People have always felt the influence of gravity, but the essence of the phenomenon found a scientific explanation relatively recently, in 1686, when Newton's work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica was published. It marks the beginning of contemporary physics and a new epoch in science. Newton is also known for having said: "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." These giants were Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes and Johannes Kepler.
Galileo formulated the following law about the motion of falling bodies in the gravitation field: if there is no resistance, all bodies, regardless of their weight, fall at exactly the same speed and acceleration. This way, the concept of the free falling body was achieved. Using his skill of abstraction and intuition, Galileo also formulated two other important principles. The law of inertia: a body moving on a level surface will continue in the same direction at a constant speed unless disturbed. The principle of superposition: If a body is subjected to two separate influences, each producing a characteristic type of motion, it responds to each without modifying its response to the other.
The following step to the understanding of motion was taken by Descartes. He discovered how one body makes another move and reached one of the most significant categories of laws of nature -- the laws of conservation. While solving the problem of collision of two bodies, Descartes made use of the law of conservation of momentum: if two bodies collide, the momentum can be transferred from one body to another, but the total momentum can neither increase nor decrease. It follows from that law that the motion of the mass centre of a system cannot be changed by the internal forces of the same system.
The law of inertia, the principle of superposition and the law of conservation of momentum became the foundation for Newton's laws.
The conflict between the earth- and sun-centred world views culminated in the works of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. After Brahe's death, Kepler used Brahe's observation data to determine the mathematical form of orbits in the sun-centred system. Until then, Kepler and Galileo had only mapped the motion of bodies and reached their laws empirically, but these also had to be proved mathematically -- the reasons for those motions had to be illustrated.
The main problem in Newton's Principia was derivation of the orbits of the sun-centred system from his law of gravity where the attraction is proportional to the mass of both bodies and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Through the motion of the moon, he could relate this force to gravitational acceleration on earth. This was the first time a connection was observed between a celestial and a terrestrial phenomenon.
In Principia, he presented his three laws in detail. In Newton's First Law, we recognize Galileo's law of inertia. His Second Law or the main law of dynamics states that the change of momentum of a body is proportional to the impulse impressed on the body, and happens along the straight line on which that impulse is impressed. In most cases the masses of the bodies exchanging impulses remain constant, and only their speeds change. In this case the geometrical sum of all the forces influencing a point is proportional to the acceleration of the point. Newton called the proportionality factor before the acceleration vector the mass of a point. According to the Third Law, to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or -- the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and directed in opposite directions. By this law, Newton just emphasizes the conservation of impulse, as it was formulated by Descartes and Huygens. The Second Law, however, is entirely Newton's own.
The article also includes a short biography of Newton.
Maarja L›hmus, Helle Tiikmaa, Andres J›esaar, Ants Johanson
Designing the Estonian identity: The path of choices for broadcasting
L›hmus, Tiikmaa, J›esaar and Johanson focus on the developing stages of Estonian public broadcasting from 1990-2010.
After the fall of the party-governed media system of the Soviet Union, the idealist vision of building a western-style civic society and public service broadcasting system prevailed, while broadcasting got tangled in a lack of visions and continuous decrease in funding. The development of a public service broadcasting system has not been stated as a real national goal in Estonia. Belief in the negative effect of delimiting of the freedom of an entrepreneur together with individualistic ideology has won; the role of uniting people and informational environment of citizenry has been left in the background. Hence, the idealistic vision of the role of public service broadcasting as the bearer and creator of national culture is in constant contradiction with everyday practices.
Sociocultural vision has been formulated in legal acts, development plans and political statements, but the real decisions for directing the broadcasting system have been guided by the liberal market model. Preference given to commercial media has caused constant insufficiency in funding and has thereby forced choices between content and technology, continuously diminishing the share of quality programming. The instability has also increased through pivotal decisions of restructuring which did not permit long-term planning and realization of plans. We present the developing stages, the reasons behind and the results of the contradiction.
Riho Saard
On the birth of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church
The first project for a national church was compiled by Ado Grenzstein, a layman who was arguably one of the most essential trailblazers in reorganization of the church. Grenzstein's ideas were repeated in Villem Reiman's essays in 1905.
The congress of Estonian congregations' delegates in Tartu in 1917 was one of the preparatory congresses meant to precede the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia. The preliminary conferences of the General Synod where a draft for the new church structure had to be compiled for presentation to the Constituent Assembly took place in St. Petersburg on 27-29 July 1917 and 24-26 January 1918. Due to political events, the General Synod planned for the autumn of 1918 could not be held.
The 1917 congress of delegates of Estonian congregations did not proclaim an independent Estonian church but formulated the principles according to which, in the delegates' opinion, reorganization of the existing Lutheran church should have begun. Hopes were placed on the future autonomous Estonian self-government within the composition of Russia.
Misleading ideas about the 1917 congress of delegates of Estonian congregations began to spread in 1978. Interpretations contradicting the facts were presented by the exiled Archbishop Konrad Veem. Influenced by him, Archbishop of the EELC Jaan Kiivit began, from 1995, to consistently mark the 1917 congress in church calendars as the founding date of the EELC.
The resolutions adopted by the 1917 congress of delegates of Estonian congregations and the draft for the statutes of the people's church discussed there can be called the first preconstitutional acts of the later EELC, but not the birth acts of a new church. In reality, the EELC could not be established before the German occupation of Estonia collapsed and the Provisional Government of Estonia was restored on 11 November 1918. This also created the conditions for the birth of the EELC. The regulations of the Provisional Government of Estonia of February and April 1919 legally separated the Estonian Lutheran Church from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia and its legislation.
The EELC was legally constituted when Bishop Jakob Kukk, elected by the first general congress of the Church (10-12 September 1919), was appointed to office by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Estonia on 17 October. On 29 October 1919, the earlier Consistory yielded power to a new one consisting of ethnic Estonians only.
Riina Ruut
Garment in the visions of Hildegard of Bingen
In the visionary works of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) (Scivias, Liber vitae meritorum, Liber divinorum operum) the motifs of garment and decoration are found among the topics dealing with divine beauty (as well as truth, justice, goodness, etc.). It applies to both the material (the creation of a robe being the robe of God) and spiritual realms.
The garment symbolizes the essence of its bearer, which is manifested in his deeds. The world as a whole (opus Dei) is the visible robe of the invisible God. Incarnation therefore is the tunic of the word of God that redeems the created world. When moulding a man (parvum opus Dei), God made him as fit garment for Christ. In Hildegard's visions, the metaphor of incarnation as a robe of word of God transforms into allegorical clothes of virtues. In most cases, clothes symbolize various aspects of redemption. Being clothed in virtues equals being clothed in Christ: following the ultimate moral example. Decoration and ornamentation emphasize perfection even more vigorously.
Hildegard elaborates classical theological topics in unique pictures and often uses traditional Christian symbols and metaphors in atypical connotations. Her works are one of the treasures of twelfth century symbolic literature.
Margus T›nissaar
On the efficiency and necessity of physical tests in the selection of police officers
In July 2009, the press published an announcement that the Estonian Police had changed the physical requirements for men and women to be equal. The argument was that women in the police force were getting beaten and were not able to stand up for themselves and their colleagues when on patrols. As, on average, women are physically weaker than men, the question is whether, from the viewpoint of gender equality, physical abilities are necessary for police work and whether they should be measured in the process of selection. Considering the public interest and the discussion around potential gender discrimination, T›nissaar describes in detail the face validity, legitimate, structural and predictive validity of physical tests.
The face validity of physical tests is high, but their structural validity is rather low, as for coping with situations needing physical exertion other qualities besides physical force are needed. Until now, analysis of work has paid little attention to other qualities. There is also little proof of the predictive validity of physical tests. When assessing their results, different approach to work at different police institutions -- tasks that may differ according to localities, officers' different work styles and, particularly, the influence of training -- should be taken into consideration. As physical abilities can be developed in the course of training, their assessment need not be necessary in staff selection, even if physical abilities predict people's future success in their work.
In training, in addition to physical exercises, greater attention should be paid to the promotion of a healthy lifestyle among police officers, and an individual approach to the cadets should be applied. Considering the extremely diverse selection methods at police institutions and differences in their work tasks and style of work, each police institution should analyse its work and the performance of its staff to identify the necessary selection criteria. It cannot be excluded that for different posts, different selection criteria should be created. The share of selection methods that hinder the selection of police officers that possess the requisite qualities should be decreased.
Until now, studies have increasingly supported the view that women are no worse than men at police work, and in some cases, due to their different work style, even better. As there is no proof that women are unfit for police work, selection methods that would decrease their number cannot be justified.
Wilfrid Sellars
Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Part IV
Based on lectures delivered in London in 1956, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" is the most famous work by Wilfrid Sellars (1912-1989). It is a sustained discussion and rejection of what he called "The Myth of the Given", the claim -- central to both phenomenology and sense-data theories of knowledge -- that we can know things about our perceptual experiences independently of and in some important sense prior to the conceptual apparatus which we use to perceive objects. Within the empiricist tradition, the "given" is also held to be the foundation of all knowledge. Sellars himself constructs "The Myth of Jones", a philosophical parable to explain how thoughts, intelligent action, and even subjective inner experience can be attributed to people within the naturalistic worldview. One of his most central goals, which may be called Kantian, is reconciling the conceptual behaviour of the "space of reasons" with the concept of a subjective sense experience. Sellars follows Kant in rejecting the Cartesian picture of a sensory-cognitive continuum. The "of-ness" of sensations -- e.g., a sensation's being of a red triangle -- is not the intentional "of-ness" ("aboutness") of thoughts.
Bruno Mšlder
Sellars' mythology
In the afterword to the Estonian translation of the inarguably best-known article by William Sellars, which amounts to the length of a small book, Bruno Mšlder offers a few explanations and introduces the two myths described in the article and the considerations relevant to the topic.