1,721,072 research outputs found
Transformation and Persistence of the Basin Valley of Mexico in the 16th and 17th Centuries
Full text linkIn order to contribute to the debate on the origins of Anthropocene, this paper analyzes the transformations of the Basin-Valley of Mexico during the 16th and 17th centuries as an early instance of the changes produced in the Anthropocene period. More specifically, this case is studied as an example of the impact of the Iberian colonization of the Americas on local environments by focusing on the geo-hydrological alterations caused by natural and cultural innovations introduced by the Europeans into the basin. It shows how the confrontation between different ways of living and understanding the city, the lakes, and their relationship originated different proposals for water management. Transforming the basin into a valley was close to geological process rather than a mere outcome of political decisions; therefore, this occurred much slowly than the urban elites intended. While this was a problem for the city, it allowed the indigenous way of life, linked to the lakes, to persist and continue for a longer period of time
The American De coelo: Heaven and Earth in the New World's First Printed Work on Natural Philosophy
Full text linkThe article analyses Alonso de la Vera Cruz's ideas on cosmography, including both celestial and geographical conceptions, displayed in De coelo from his Physica speculatio (1557). This book introduced in New Spain the hegemonic natural knowledge of the time as well as alternative ideas. At the same time, living for years in the New World, La Vera Cruz drew on his own experience when discussing the qualities of the Americas and their inhabitants. Unlike the imperial cosmography of the time, he valued not only the natural qualities of those lands but also their inhabitants, which had important social implications. The article also argues that La Vera Cruz reinterpreted European notions to adapt them to the Americas and, at the same time, developed a local perspective that transferred the idea of centrality from Europe to the New World. In doing so, he had to mediate with both local and transatlantic interests and visions. Reissued three more times in Salamanca since the 1569 edition, the Physica speculatio included references to the coasts of the American continent, which constitutes an exception to the secret nature of this kind of cosmographical information in the Ibero-American world
Tradiciones de cambio y observación tradicionalista en los albores de la cosmología europea en la Nueva España
Full text linkThe present text studies the introduction and development of European celestial conceptions in New Spain in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Although these notions used to be the usually accepted at the time, the origins of some of the first cosmological novelties are sought for. More precisely, it is examined how two basic ideas of the peripatetic cosmology began to be questioned: the sharp distinction between the celestial and the earthly region, and the existence of celestial spheres that carry the stars with them. In this way, the possible sources of the first changes to these predominant notions are tracked studying mainly, on the one hand, the epistemic concept of the dialectic developed at the time and, on the other, the use of experience and observation, to analyze later their respective contributions to the first innovations in the celestial notions in New Spain
Inventio y re-invención de América en el origen de la modernidad
Full text linkA diferencia del acomodo de saberes moderno, anteriormente no se distinguía tajantemente entre naturaleza y cultura, lo que se aprecia en la noción de inventio clásica que conjuntaba nuestras nociones de “descubrimiento” natural e “invención” humana. Lo que nos lleva a intentar recuperar cómo se dio en su momento la inventio originaria de América. Para lo cual retomamos, para poner a prueba después, las hipótesis de Latour sobre las prácticas modernas de purificación y de generación de híbridos de naturaleza-cultura. Lo anterior nos permite analizar, a continuación, algunos ejemplos que han intentado dar cuenta de la “invención” de América sin lograr romper totalmente con la dualidad moderna. Con estos antecedentes, pasamos a estudiar la noción clásica de inventio y cómo la misma fue aplicada para el caso de América en su momento. A continuación, recuperamos la generación de diversidad de inventiones dentro de los imperios iberoamericanos y su papel para el surgimiento de la modernidad, lo que nos llevará a cuestionar la periodización y la explicación causal latouriana
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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