Measuring the Heavens: Charles S. Peirce and Astronomical Photography

Taking its point of departure from the current digitisation of the Harvard Astronomical Plate Collection, this article follows the plates back to the time when the status of photography as a research tool for astronomers was still to be established. It focuses on Charles S. Peirce, who, while employed by the US Coast Survey, made astronomical observations and contributed to the deliberation over visual and photographic methods. Particular attention is paid to Peirce’s involvement in early explorations of photography’s potential as a measurement tool. The guiding assumption is that approaching photography as a tool, rather than as a sign or representation, offers new inroads into the old problem of photography’s revealing powers and its capacity to serve as a means of discovery in science. Drawing on Peirce’s scientific practice as an alternative resource for theory construction, this article contributes to the ongoing efforts to conceptualise the productive or generative dimension of photographic methods. It concludes by pointing to the diagrammatic notion of evidence developed late in Peirce’s philosophical career, proposing that photography be reconceived as a diagrammatic tool.     

Central office personnel.

Charles S. Gersoni has been appointed Associate Executive Officer and Director of Program Administration. "Gersoni has gained wide recognition as an administrator of psychological research and service programs in the Army." His BS and MS degrees were earned at the University of Virginia and the PhD at New York University; he is a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology. John J. McMillan has been appointed Administrative Officer, State and Professional Affairs in the Office of Program Administration. Joseph B. Margolin resumed his duties with the USPHS in December. Harley O. Preston joined the staff as Staff Officer, Public Affairs in the Executive Office. Lawrence N. Solomon has returned to the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, La Jolla, California. Robert Hood has been appointed Manager, Publication and Data Processing Services, in the Office of Business Administration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Persistence of the Pastoral

Architect, animator and educator Nic Clear challenges the contemporary notion of the pastoral to go beyond the simplistic binary opposites of the untainted rural idyll and the industrialised city. He explores how the narratives of the pastoral have provided a mainstay for science fiction and how this can be used to re-imagine nature itself with the aid of advanced biotechnologies to create new architectures for the 21st century.     

The Grounds of a Renewed Practice: Groundlab's Approach Towards Landscape and Infrastructure

Based in London and Beijing, Groundlab is an emerging international practice that specialises in landscape urbanism. Eva Castro, José Alfredo Ramírez and Eduardo Rico of Groundlab describe the potential that the ground itself provides for a new urbanism, which is able to integrate multiple fields and scales while also engaging with greater territorial systems. They explain how landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted was influential in establishing an approach that uses ecological infrastructure as the basis for design. They proceed in describing two Groundlab projects that integrate ground remediation and water infrastructure techniques: Paisajes Latentes urban design masterplan for Valle De Chalco Solidaridad in Mexico City (2011) and the Ground Ecologies masterplan for the redevelopment of the Jiading District in Shanghai (2010).     

The ‘Annie Hypothesis': Did the Death of His Daughter Cause Darwin to ‘Give up Christianity’?

This article examines one of the most widely believed episodes in the life of Charles Darwin, that the death of his daughter Annie in 1851 caused the end of Darwin's belief in Christianity, and according to some versions, ended his attendance of church on Sundays. This hypothesis, it is argued, is commonly treated as a straightforward true account of Darwin's life, yet there is little or no supporting evidence. Furthermore, we argue, there is sufficient evidence that Darwin's loss of faith occurred before Annie's death.     

Local Stone (A Fragment)

At a time when a wide range of building materials is available around the world, the decision to use locally sourced stone in India often extends beyond the pragmatic. As Reinhold Martin explains, a particular choice of stone can potentially set off a complex string of associations with geopolitical connotations. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

触及建筑的深层结构 --基于印度建筑师柯立亚建筑作品的类型学分析

该文通过对我国建筑业全球化思潮的反思,借助印度建筑师柯立亚对设计方法的阐述及建筑原动力的分析,解读其实际创作中呈现出的设计思想,总结出基于传统建筑的现代类型学创作方法,完成从"一阶类型"的提取,到"二阶类型"的变形,再到"二阶类型"在现实世界的还原这整个过程的模式设定,由此提出一个在当代建筑中创造其深层含义的可能性.     

After BitTorrent: Darknets to Native Data

What are the implications of the inherent reflexivity of the Internet for the design professions? Anthony Burke argues that radically innovative and distributed forms of information exchange such as BitTorrent suggest a general shift away from the traditional conception of the architect as master builder to one more in line with the collaborative remixing and patching tactics of the hacker. BitTorrent is a communications protocol that allows massive information exchange across infinite users with minimum resources. Through its sheer force of collectively pooled imagination, it provides a potent example of the sorts of platforms of information exchange that foster the new forms of communal organisation that Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri term the ‘Multitude’, and which productively challenge conventional models of cultural invention and production. In this context, Burke raises questions about the implications of this broader shift for the design professions' business organisation, as well as their more general methodologies. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Wordless Book: The Visual and Material Culture of Evangelism in Victorian Britain

The Wordless Book is widely used today in programs of Christian teaching and evangelism across the world. It consists of a series of blank pages which are colored in accordance with religious symbolism (black in reference to sin, red in reference to the redeeming blood of Christ, and so forth). It is employed as a way of engaging those who cannot read the words of the gospel, particularly the very young and the illiterate. It was employed by British and American missionaries from the later decades of the nineteenth century in Africa, India, China and elsewhere. This article explores the context of the invention of The Wordless Book by Charles Haddon Spurgeon and its popularization by Dwight L. Moody. Firstly, it is explored for what it can tell us about the visual culture of Christian evangelism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Secondly, it is considered as a mass-produced material object that was circulated together with hundreds of thousands of Christian tracts. However, unlike their textually rich companions, the books without words have not been preserved in library collections. The study, therefore, of the appearance and subsequent disappearance of Victorian wordless books also provides us with valuable insights into the perceived importance of texts and abstract images during this period.     

Side by Side: The Halftone’s Visual Culture of Pragmatism

Charles S. Peirce’s late-nineteenth-century semiotic theory has long been considered one of the key frameworks for analysing the photograph as a visual sign. This article, however, proposes a closer look at Peirce’s contemporaneous philosophy of pragmatism as a fundamental component of the visual, cultural, and intellectual context within which the photographic halftone first emerged. When, exactly, did it begin to matter if a photographic image made up of a certain arrangement of graphic marks was read differently from a photographic image made up of a different arrangement of graphic marks? Such pragmatist questions were crucial to the early reception of halftone reproductions, which were often integrated into illustrated magazines as simply one element within an already diverse array of graphic codes. Turning to Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (1890) as a case study, this article argues that reading the halftone as a chiefly photographic sign was not in fact an inevitable outcome of its introduction into the illustrated press in the 1880s and 1890s, but required instead a constant negotiation of both visual and conceptual imprecision – an imprecision eventually smoothed over in favour of an association of halftone technology with photographic ontology by the early twentieth century.