School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe archaeology of religion in early iron age Anatolia(University of Melbourne, 2001)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe archaeology of religion in early iron age Anatolia(University of Melbourne, 2001)
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ItemSinnbildforschung : the science of the Swastika : Old Germanic Studies and the Third Reich(University of Melbourne, 2001)The story of Sinnbildforschung is the tale of development of Old Germanic studies (altere Germanistik) under the influence of radical right-wing ideology. Sinnbildforschung or ideographic studies developed around investigations of the nature and meaning of the swastika and other similar symbols employed by the prehistorical and early historical ancestors of the modern-day Germans. As these same symbols had also become emblematic of the forces of German reaction, Sinnbildforschung became intrinsically connected with the National Socialist regime after 1933 and disappeared along with the Third Reich in 1945. With the Nazi seizure of power, ideographic studies, which at the time was already a flourishing enterprise, became directly supported by the state. In 1935 an organisation was founded within the SS to further its study, the SS-Ahnenerbe, the Learned Society for Intellectual Prehistory (Studiengesellschaft fiir Geistesurgesch�chte). Most infamous as the organ through which medical experiments were arranged to be performed on the inmates of concentration camps, the Ahnenerbe was founded as a historical research institution before it expanded its horizons to the physical sciences. The study of Germanic antiquity and especially its symbols had become an important focus for some leading Nazis, Heinrich Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg among them. The official encouragement of Germanic antiquarian study seemed to represent a creative foil to the negativity of the darker side of Nazism. Old Germanic studies encompassed ancient Germanic history, archaeology, anthropology, folklore, historical linguistics and philology. Over the course of the 1910s and 1920s, theories based in ideals usually regarded as generic to fascist belief systems today were hailed as new paradigms within Germanic antiquarian studies. Indeed, Jewish scholars began to be hounded out of the relevant academic societies from 1927, and their publishing opportunities began to be curtailed long before 1933. Sinnbildforschung was the most overtly radicalised development in Old Germanic studies at the time, and its development serves well to illustrate the ideological continuity of the Third Reich from the late years of the Wilhelmine period and the Weimar Republic. In fact a leading position was traditionally afforded to academics within German society. A study of what was regarded at the time as the most conservative field with the German scholastic tradition, and indeed in the case of Sinnhildforschung the most radical offshoot of it, will serve better to explain how reactionary ideologies had come to permeate German society so strongly that intellectuals, too, hailed the National Socialist regime.
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ItemRedescribing language use records( 2001)We develop a formal theory which is intended to serve as a tool to help investigate the process of radical interpretation. The theory is specifically intended to be used in the context of ongoing interpretation, which we call infinite interpretation. It is assumed that the investigation of such interpretation would take place by considering infinite interpretative scenarios in the finite context of academic consideration, on the assumption that the scenarios proposed appropriately represented the crucial features of actual infinite interpretative processes. And it is anticipated that this sort of investigation would result in establishing general principles of infinite interpretation which might in turn shed light on broader semantic concerns. However, in order to confine the scope of the project, we concentrate on developing the formal theory and discussing general philosophical concerns about this theory, rather than applying it to investigate interpretation or to discussing philosophical aspects of its application. The theory which we develop is expected to serve as a tool by way of establishing that certain proposed scenarios do not have the desirable property of being effectively describable. Of course, the value in applying the theory assumes that the result is not already determined, and so we would assume that a proposed scenario was only initially described to the extent required to ensure that certain semantic qualities were incorporated. We do not expect to develop a theory which will serve to exclude all those scenarios which can not be effectively described, though we do expect it to be a significant means of breaking into the problem. And the approach which we anticipate to be of value in this way is to consider proposed infinite interpretative scenarios which require access to records of object language use, whereby some of these records may not be directly accessible. By considering the indirect accessibility of these records, it is expected that restrictions on the possibility of effective description can be established. Moreover, effective description of a proposed scenario requires those records which can not be accessed directly to be effectively described as being accessed from object language use records which are directly accessible. Formally, we refer to such a description of indirect access as redescription, and so by proving that redescription is not possible, it can be shown that a proposed infinite interpretative scenario can not be effectively described. Furthermore, to aid this analysis, we assume that other aspects of a scenario can be effectively described, which is obviously acceptable given that failure to effectively describe some other aspect means that it must already the case that the scenario can not be effectively described. By viewing object language use records as encoded by natural numbers, the notion of redescription is formally analysed using recursion theory. The basic aim is to consider the factor which arises as having a significant bearing on the possibility of redescription, which is the comparison of the information content of all directly accessible records with the information content of all records to be indirectly accessed. Following this, we discuss general philosophical concerns about the theory.
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ItemThe Epistemological and axiological tenets of scientific realism( 2001)In Part I, I criticise theory-based epistemic realism. In its most basic form, this is the view that we can be justified in believing that our successful theories are true. The basic explanationist argument put forward to justify that belief it would be a miracle were our theories successful but not true. In recent literature, realists have advanced a number of sophistications on this basic view: truth is replaced by approximate truth; success is defined to be novel success; a commitment to theories is refined to a commitment to certain theoretical constituents, etc. Carefully tracing such realist advances, I invoke and further a series of non-realist arguments. For instance, I clarify an important historical argument, spelling out a number of significant implications, and I show that these implications bear on each sophistication of realism. To justify an epistemic commitment to one theory among a large set of equally successful rival theories, realists invoke supraempirical virtues (e.g., simplicity). I argue that recent appeals to such virtues fail either to eliminate the competitors or to connect the virtues to truth (thus belief). I contend that, as a result, even what is usually written off as a "trivial" form of underdetermination seriously threatens realism. Against the claim that realism provides the only or best explanation for the success of scientific theories, I sort through and develop a number of non-realist alternative explanations. . Adjudicating between competing explanations, I appeal to a set of essentially noncontentious criteria, e.g., the ability to explain specific historical successes, the degree to which an explanation implies what it is purported to explain, etc. Employing such criteria, I argue that, among the explanations for success considered, one of the non-realist explanations I advance is preferable. After tracing the various realist sophistications, I conclude that despite the contemporary confidence in theory-based realism, its case has yet to be made. In light of this, and still wanting to retain the view that science pursues the truth, we have reason to develop an axiological realism that is independent of epistemic realism. This is the concern of Part II. I begin by postulating that science seeks a certain type of truth. I explicate this notion of truth and show that the achievement of such an end requires the achievement of a set of key theoretical virtues. Drawing on this point, I illustrate that, even if truth is an epistemically inaccessible goal, its pursuit is not rendered irrational. And I argue that -- in contrast with non-realism and other axiological realisms relying on epistemic realism -- my axiological realism both explains and justifies science's pursuit of these key virtues. I conclude that science pursues the truth and is justified in doing so, irrespective of whether we can justifiably believe we have achieved truth. In the final chapter, I discuss the relationship between epistemic and axiological realism, and I offer a proposal of how my axiological realism can be invoked to ground a foundational epistemic realism.
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ItemHer self portrayed: Australian women's self-portraits between the wars 1918-1939( 2001-12)The subject of this dissertation is female self-portraiture in Australia of the interwar years, 1918 to 1939. The primary concern of this thesis is to consider self-portraiture as a conceptual process. Self-portrayal is understood as an act of cultural invention rather than an unmediated access to an essential core self. It is this invention and what is entailed in the process of self-imagining, rather than any formal analysis of the style, which is of greatest concern. The thesis examines the challenges faced by Australian interwar women in using an aesthetic convention designed to champion 'the artist' - a masculinist paradigm. The misogynist values encoded in traditional self-portrait iconography mediated the process of self-imagining form women. Thus, in seeking to portray the ‘self’, women were forced to devise strategies to deal with the exclusion integral to self-portrait traditions. It is the argument of this thesis that the exclusions formalised through self-portrait iconography provided a microcosm of the broader historical marginalisation of women in the 1920s and 1930s. Seen this way, Australian interwar female self-portraiture is a register of the wider struggle by women to work for equal pay, to accommodate new forms of femininity and to exercise their rights as citizens. the thesis presents historically based interpretations of works by women artists who worked in high, commercial and modernist art arenas. Such a diverse range allows for an inter-disciplinary approach in which Australian female self-portraiture will be examined from multiple perspectives – historical, philosophical, sociological, psychoanalytical, literary and cultural.
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ItemThe consumption of the Internet in household families( 2001)This thesis examines the consumption of the Internet by household families. It is based on data collected in Canberra; 689 responses to a self-completion survey to parents on attitudes to, and use of, the Internet and more than 75 interviews with members of 19 household families who had the Internet connected at home. (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemMaking pictures: Australian pictorial photography as art, 1897-1957( 2001)Pictorialism was the dominant international photographic style from the 1890s until the late 1930s. In this thesis I examine the history of the movement in Australia from its beginnings in 1897, until the late 1950s when it finally faded away. Nineteenth century photographers used the camera to portray 'reality' or 'truth'. Pictorial photographers, who first appeared in Europe in the 1890s, aspired to be known as artists who sought beauty rather than 'truth' in their imagery. However, as an artistic instrument the camera had limitations. The most important of these was the fact that a negative is simply a record of what is in front of the lens; how then could a photographic print be art? Another drawback was the perception, as cheap cameras became widely available at the end of the century, that taking a photograph required little or no talent; 'anyone' could do it. Many Pictorialists therefore aimed to make images that resembled photographs as little as possible. To this end various manipulative devices were employed. The primary focus of my investigation has been to supplement the reasonably well known story of Australian Pictorialists noted for this kind of manipulation, producing soft-focus 'impressionist' hand work, with an account of the achievement of others, working in a 'natural' style, whose history has been neglected. I have also been concerned in this thesis to reclaim the reputations of Pictorialists, both men and women, from the reproach that they were only concerned to imitate works in other media, notably nineteenth century painting. In doing this, I have analysed who took photographs, what their motives were, and what their images signified, paying particular attention to the contextual, institutional, historical, and discursive parameters of Pictorialism. I use an investigative methodology heavily reliant upon contemporary sources, particularly the photographic journals. As well, I examine concepts applied to photography, such as the use of light, and compare them with ideas prevalent within Australian cultural discourse at the time affecting literature, poetry, and the visual arts. In order to do this, I use parallelism, induction, equivalent, and speculative reconstruction where concrete statements of Pictorialist aesthetics are absent. Pictorialism, in Australia as elsewhere, continues to be a relatively neglected area, although interest in an artistic style which has been out of fashion for decades often returns unexpectedly. The revival in the fortunes of Victorian pre-Raphaelite painters in recent years is one striking example. Such considerations apart, I argue that a movement which attracted so many enthusiastic participants, which was distinguished by an eclecticism ignored by most commentators today, which lasted so long, and has been so influential, does not deserve to be forgotten. Its history holds much to interest the serious photographer as well the social historian.
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ItemAn age of certainty: three generations of Melbourne radicals, 1870-1988( 2001)This thesis traces the history of a Melbourne family, the Higgins-Palmer family, over three generations, focusing on the political formation and activities of six family members: H B Higgins, Nettie Palmer, Vance Palmer, Esmonde Higgins, Aileen Palmer and Helen Palmer. It seeks to locate them in the evolution of radical politics in Australia, and particularly in Melbourne, from the 1890s to the 1960s. The thesis begins with an examination of the career of H B Higgins in the context of the Victorian tradition of radical liberalism. It follows the development of H B Higgins's niece and nephew, Nettie Palmer (nee Higgins) and Esmonde Higgins, who both, in different ways and to different degrees, reacted against that tradition. Nettie's career before 1914 leads us to the rise and fall of the Victorian Socialist Party, Esmonde's postwar career to the formative years of the Australian communist party. The thesis then moves to the 1930s, when both Nettie Palmer and Esmonde Higgins have become disillusioned with their earlier beliefs but when Nettie's daughters, Aileen and Helen Palmer, have become active communists. The various family conflicts that arise from this are considered. In the 1950s Helen Palmer leaves the Communist Party, and Vance and Nettie Palmer and Esmonde Higgins move to the end of their careers, rediscovering in various ways the Melbourne radical and liberal tradition. The thesis tries within the space available to give as full a picture as possible of the lives and careers of six complex and highly articulate people, all of whom at various times played important roles in aspects of Australian political, intellectual and cultural history. Their literary careers are necessarily given only brief consideration, at risk of some distortion of their priorities in life. The focus is on the evolution of their political views, their political relationships with one another, and their involvements in the wider political life of 20th century Australia.
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ItemA Hellenistic housing insula in North Syria( 2001)This thesis examines the material remains, both architectural and artefactual, of a housing insula in Jebel Khalid, North Syria, a Seleucid military settlement on the Euphrates. The excavations of 1988-1996, which uncovered more than a third of the insula, are the basis of the investigation. The importance of the insula lies in its unique status as a virgin site, not subsequently built over, and the contribution it can thus make towards a better knowledge of domestic life in Hellenistic Syria, an area much neglected in archaeological research. The thesis establishes three artefact typologies: the lamps, the figurines and the local pottery. The lamps are found to confirm the chronological evidence of the coins of a date-range of 250-75 BC Imports from Antioch are strong but there is considerable evidence of a different, local type. The figurines show a variety of types, which are mainly Hellenistic in style but include Near Eastern figures such as Astarte plaques and Persian riders. The implication is that the population was not entirely Greek. The local/regional pottery is a rich source of information on eating, drinking, cooking and storing habits. The pottery typology contains forty-three types of vessels, most of which are 'international' Hellenistic shapes. However, there is a significant proportion of shapes surviving from the Persian period, particularly in the coarser wares and some shapes which are difficult to parallel elsewhere. The quality of the table ware is high. Cooking vessels are interesting in that they do not include the 'Greek' casserole. For all the typologies, careful account is taken of the contexts of the finds and the pottery is quantified for each area or room. This information is used in the final chapter which analyses selected contexts in terms of the architecture, the installations, association with other rooms, accessibility from the outside and the finds within their context. At least two houses are identified and some observations are made on the characteristics of a Jebel Khalid house, including comments on modes of entry, courtyards, the main room or 'oikos', the arrangement of rooms in a suite, the function of long narrow rooms and the identification of kitchen areas. The lack of certain features, such as andron, bathroom and water storage, is addressed. Comparanda from both East and West show the houses to be, once more, predominantly influenced by Greek design but adapted to the conditions of the site, which involves some features seen in Near Eastern houses. In conclusion, the houses and their contents have revealed a prosperous, heavily Hellenised society which nevertheless shows signs of a Syrian element, in the local production of lamps and figurines, in the retention of some Persian period shapes among the pottery, and in certain design features of the houses themselves.