Oxford University Press's Blog, page 270

Landmark moments for women in philosophy [timeline]

This March, the OUP Philosophy team are celebrating Women in Philosophy. Throughout time, women have had to fight for their place in history, academia, and the philosophy discipline. Women have made hugely significant contributions to both philosophy and academia as a whole and we believe it is crucial to look back at the landmark achievements of women in their work and recognize their importance.

To honour their contributions, we will be highlighting women and their achievements in the field of philosophy all throughout Women’s History Month.

Browse our interactive timeline of some of the most empowering moments in the history of women in philosophy. For more of our Women in Philosophy Month content, check out #WomenInPhilMonth on Twitter.

Which female achievements in academia would you add in? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image: Nine Living Muses of Great Britain by Richard Samuel. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Lützen and the birth of modern warfare

The battle of Lützen between the imperial and Swedish armies was fought about 19km southwest of Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, on Tuesday 16 November 1632. It was neither the largest nor the bloodiest battle of the Thirty Years War (1618-48), Europe’s most destructive conflict prior to the twentieth-century world wars, but it is certainly the best remembered today.

The Thirty Years War has been remembered primarily as a bloody religious war which began in the Holy Roman Empire before allegedly spiralling out of control and engulfing most of Europe. Supposedly, it finally burnt itself out through mutual exhaustion, paving the way for the Peace of Westphalia which is widely regarded as the birth of a new secular international order. English-speaking historians have generally followed the lead established by contemporary British observers who saw the war as a struggle between an evil Austrian Habsburg emperor seeking to impose Catholicism, and valiant Protestant Germans fighting for their religious ‘freedom.’ Aided by the ‘mercenary’ general, Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein, the Habsburgs finally had complete victory in their grasp when the German Protestants were ‘saved’ by the Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, who invaded the Empire in June 1630. Over the next two years, Gustavus won a string of spectacular victories which convinced later generations of military historians not only that he was one of the world’s greatest generals, but that Sweden had ‘revolutionised’ war-making.

Lützen became central to this received image, because it was where the Swedish Protestant ‘hero-king’ ‘met his death in the hour of victory.’ However, unlike Yorktown (1781), Waterloo (1815) or Königgrätz (1866), Lützen did not end a conflict or even mark a significant turning point in the Thirty Years War. It did not repel an invasion like Marathon (490 BCE), Trafalgar (1805), or the Battle of Britain (1940). It was extremely hard-fought, with over a quarter of the combatants being killed or seriously wounded during the nine hours of fighting, but the bloodletting did not constitute a heroic ‘last stand’ like Thermopylai (480 BCE), Little Big Horn (1876), Isandlwana (1879) or Dien Bien Phu (1954). Nor was Lützen ‘decisive’ in the sense of a clear-cut victory with immediate tangible strategic and political results, unlike Naseby (1645), or Blenheim (1704). Given these comparisons, it is fair to ask why so much significance has been attached to it and why it is still commemorated annually today.

Portrait of Gustav II Adolf of Sweden (1594-1632) by Jacob Hoefnagel (1573–1632/1633). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The battle in 1632 was not the only one fought at Lützen. Napoleon scored a costly tactical victory over a combined Prussian and Russian army on 2 May 1813 just 4km south of the scene of the earlier action. Both are commemorated in large dioramas in the town’s museum, with the Napoleonic battle represented by 5,500 miniature figures. While each has an important place in local heritage, only the first has secured a prominent place in history, while the second remains a footnote to the campaign which ended Napoleon’s rule in Germany at the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig five months later.

The contrast between these two battles provides an opportunity to reflect on what makes a great historical ‘event’. Neither ended a war or produced a major shift in international relations, yet the first battle of Lützen found an immediate echo in image and print, and became the object of political and historical disputes. To study Lützen’s legacy is to explore how such events are constantly rewritten as elements of propaganda, religious and national identity, and professional military culture. More specifically, Lützen exemplifies how the Thirty Years War is remembered and how it has been written into wider military and European history.

Its impact is heightened by the presence of the seventeenth-century’s two most famous generals, Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, and above all by the latter’s death. Swedish propaganda swiftly fostered the lasting image of the king’s sacrifice for the Protestant cause against the spectre of Catholic Habsburg ‘universal monarchy.’ This heightened the confessional element in Swedish rhetoric, contributing to the general interpretation of the Thirty Years War as the last and most destructive of Europe’s ‘religious wars.’ While confession played a part in Sweden’s motives, most Germans had regarded its intervention in the Holy Roman Empire two years before as a foreign invasion. The image of selfless sacrifice was polished over the next sixteen years to legitimate Sweden’s substantial territorial acquisitions in Germany that were confirmed by the Peace of Westphalia. The confessional dimension continued into the nineteenth century, becoming overlaid by the struggle between Catholic Austria and Protestant Prussia for mastery of Germany.

The fact that Lützen was and has remained a predominantly Lutheran town assisted the development of a culture of public remembrance. After several near-misses whilst campaigning in Catholic Poland, Gustavus narrowly escaped again whilst attacking Ingolstadt in Bavaria in April 1632 when his horse was killed beneath him. His death on Catholic soil would have inhibited the kind of commemoration later associated with Lützen. He would not have been forgotten, but his memory would have become detached from the actual location of his death. It is this physical connection to the battlefield that first attracted wider attention during the eighteenth century and led to religious services at Lützen held annually since 1832 on 6 November, in line with the old Julian calendar used by European Protestants until around 1700.

Changes in the way Gustavus’ death has been remembered allow us to see how society has interpreted the notion of ‘sacrifice’ since the seventeenth century. The king’s death has remained largely in its early modern form as an individual sacrifice of a hero-king and Protestant martyr, in contrast to the twentieth-century concept of collective sacrifice associated with the mass slaughter of the two world wars. Yet, Gustavus’ continued prominence as a recognisable historical figure has contributed to the stronger memory of Lützen, in contrast to most other battles of the Thirty Years War (except, perhaps White Mountain in 1620). Gustavus thus serves as a symbolic link to what is now clearly perceived as a distant pre-modern past.

Lützen’s place in military history has even wider resonance. Gustavus is widely credited as the ‘father’ of the standing army; even of ‘modern warfare.’ His martial qualities were already emphasised by Swedish wartime propaganda, but what secured his reputation was the seal of approval by Napoleon and later generals. His campaigns became a core element of the curricula in nineteenth-century staff colleges, as well as in standard accounts of the rise of ‘western’ warfare, not least through the influential ‘military revolution’ thesis.

The battle marked the climactic end of what seemed a lightning campaign of conquest since Gustavus’ landing in northern Germany in June 1630, and which appeared to demonstrate the merits of the strategy and tactics of decision over those of attrition practised by Wallenstein. As is so often the case with history, things were rather more complicated. Rather than signalling a decisive shift towards modern warfare, Lützen indicated how closely matched the two armies were, and how they were both learning from each other during the Thirty Years War.

Featured image credit: Courtois: Die Schlacht bei Lützen 1632 by Jacques Courtois. Public Domain via  Wikimedia Commons .

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The changing face of women in medicine

As a current fourth year medical student in the United Kingdom, I am in a year in which the number of females supersedes the number of males. This trend certainly isn’t unique to my own medical school, with a General Medical Council (GMC) report stating that women now make up 55% of all undergraduate medical students. This current trend is a change, as in the past medicine has always been a male-dominated profession. The first Royal College of Physicians in the United Kingdom was founded in 1518 and for the first 400 years women were excluded from membership. It was only after the societal changes of the late 19th and 20th centuries that they opened their doors to the first female student in 1909. Reflecting on this, the last century has been an extremely exciting time for women in medicine. The traditional stereotype that men are doctors and women are nurses is finally being put to bed, so much so that that the proportion of female doctors is edging ever closer to making up 50% of the medical register. I feel fortunate to be studying in a time where I haven’t felt held back (but rather, possibly helped) by my gender.

I think I decided I wanted to pursue medicine at around the age of 14. At a careers day at school, a GP had come in to talk to interested students and spoke through what her job as a doctor entailed. I remember thinking it sounded extremely diverse and was attracted to the fact that no day was ever the same. She also explained that it’s a career in which there is scope for lifelong learning and development, an aspect that really appealed to me. The only healthcare professional in my family is my auntie, who is a nurse. She helped me get work experience at a busy London hospital and during this time, I saw some of her cancer patients with her. She is such a warm-hearted person and I was really struck by her bedside manner and how she took such time with people. As cliché as it sounds, I always knew I wanted to go into a caring profession where I had the opportunity to meet and help others and this work experience really showed me there is a huge capacity to do this in medicine.

‘Volunteering in a school for orphans, Zimbabwe’. Used with permission by Evie Watts.

My time as an undergraduate medical student has been nothing short of amazing so far. I love the fact that every day is so different; one day I could be scrubbed in assisting with a cesarean section and the next I could be out doing house calls with a GP. I have the opportunity to meet such a wide spectrum of people that, if I hadn’t chosen medicine, I would never cross paths with. I will never ever forget the magic of the first birth I ever witnessed. I was so overcome with emotion and I will forever keep the thank you card I received from the parents for being a part of their child’s birth. I have also met several people during their last days of life — it really is such a privilege to be able to meet and connect with patients and families in such a vulnerable time.

In the past year, I studied for a Masters in Global Health at a university in the Netherlands. As part of this program, I was able to travel to India for four months and Zimbabwe for two. These travels reminded me that despite my own experience of gender not being a hindrance, in other countries there is a lot of work to be done in order for gender equality to be achieved. My Masters thesis looked at the barriers to Sexual and Reproductive Health services for students in tertiary education in Zimbabwe. I was struck by the lack of sexual decision-making power the girls I spoke to had and the judgement and shame girls received for being sexually active, whilst their male counterparts were praised.

Despite this, I met incredibly inspiring people working to promote the sexual health of women in the country. In addition to these individuals, recent innovations made by women (such as the menstrual cup) will serve to cause dramatic improvements in women’s health. I met females in India who had to live in an outhouse, often with animals, whilst they were menstruating as they were deemed to be ‘dirty’. These women often used rags as they couldn’t afford disposable tampons and pads, so new innovations, such as the menstrual cap, have scope to have a huge impact.

‘Visiting a rural tribal community in Karnataka, India’. Photo used with permission by Evie Watts.

Although I haven’t encountered any obstacles pertaining to my gender so far, I think it would be naïve to say that complete gender equality exists. A BMJ report from last year stated that in 2016, women working full time earned on average 34% less than their male counterparts. Even more worrying, this pay gap has grown over the past decade. One explanation for this is that men are historically more likely to work overtime, but another contributing factor is that women fall behind when they take time out to have children. A spokesperson for the British Medical Association has said that this points towards a need for women to receive more support, including leadership training, increased mentoring, and more flexible working opportunities. I think that in the future it is the responsibility of everyone in medicine, not just females, to push for change in the system in order to achieve equality in the field.

All in all, I would strongly encourage any female interested to consider a career in medicine. In the past 100 years, competent and deserving women have made integral contributions to the sphere of medicine, which is a trajectory set only to continue. Last year, the Royal College of Physicians showcased an exhibition titled “Women in medicine: a celebration” which paid tribute to remarkable achievements made by female doctors. Every day I encounter female medical professionals (be it nurses, health care assistants, or doctors) who, through their hard work and passion in their professions, make a huge impact in patients’ lives. As I progress in my career, I am so eager to see what fantastic achievements both current and future female medical students will recognize.

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Fifty years on: what has plate tectonics ever done for us?

You might think that a phenomenon such as plate tectonics, operating on a timescale of millions of years, would have little relevance to our lives today. In fact, plate tectonics could be the reason we, and the rest of life on Earth, are here at all.

In 2004, John Prescott, then Deputy Prime Minister in Tony Blair’s New Labour government, remarked, “the tectonic plates appear to be moving,” referring to the impending downfall of Mr Blair. Since then, the tectonic plates metaphor has been applied to just about every major political transition, including events following the UK referendum on leaving the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as US President. In fact, as with most things, the politicians have got it wrong. There is no such thing as a “tectonic plate”: it is not the plates that are tectonic, but the tectonics that is plate-like.

Golden anniversary

The great unifying theory of plate tectonics is now 50 years old. Naturally, the precise date of the anniversary depends on when exactly you think the theory was born, but there is general agreement that things really got moving with the publication of a paper in Nature by Dan McKenzie and Bob Parker in December 1967. The article showed how a theorem of the eighteenth-century mathematician Leonhard Euler could be applied to what Dan and Bob called “the paving stone theory of world tectonics,” established a couple of years earlier by the great Canadian geophysicist, Tuzo Wilson. This approach provided geophysicists and their computers with the power to move, not just mountains, but entire continents and the plates that bear them, making it a simple matter to reconstruct the break-up of the supercontinent Pangea during the past 180 million years.

To demonstrate the power of Euler’s theorem, Dan and Bob chose the example of the North Pacific, the region in which detailed surveys by the US Navy a decade earlier had provided irrefutable evidence in support of the sea-floor spreading hypothesis of Vine and Matthews. Calculating the Euler pole of rotation for the Pacific plate with respect to North America, they showed that relative motion measured at the plate boundary was entirely consistent with their predictions. A few months later, a second paper, this time by Jason Morgan, appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research, exploiting the same theorem to calculate rotation poles for the African, North American, Pacific, and Antarctic plates.

A tug boat is among debris in Ofunato, Japan, following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Matthew M. Bradley. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Half a century later, plate tectonics is maturing into a dynamic theory that involves the entire globe; from the surface to the inner core. Drifting continents are recognized as the visible expression of moving plates, and plates, in turn, constitute the upper boundary layer of a great engine that delivers heat energy from the interior to the surface by slow mantle convection. At the core-mantle boundary, this engine is linked to a second giant engine that transfers heat produced by inner core formation and radioactive decay up into the mantle.

Cooled at the surface, the plates regulate mantle convection by means of subduction, the sinking of the plates into the deep mantle. Mantle convection, in turn, regulates the much faster convection in the molten iron-alloy outer core, in the process generating a reversing geomagnetic field—the field that protects the atmosphere from erosion by the solar wind and, for good measure, also records plate motions by imprinting a magnetic bar-code in the rocks of the ocean floor.

Global thermostat

Here at the surface, the plates link mantle convection to a third great heat engine driving the circulation of the atmosphere and oceans. Plate tectonics regulate this engine by operating the “global thermostat,” supplying greenhouse gases at mid-ocean ridges and volcanic arcs, and removing them by creating mountain ranges at continental collision zones where carbon dioxide is extracted during rock weathering and then carried in solution to the oceans, to be locked away in sediments. At the same time, vital nutrients are weathered out of the rocks and transported to support life in the oceans.

Furthermore, plate tectonics gradually alters the geography of continents and ocean basins, leading to long-term changes in ocean circulation and global climate. For example, a volcanic arc created by subduction—the Panama isthmus—linked the North and South American continents around 3.5 million years ago, shutting off westward-flowing currents between the Atlantic and Pacific. The flow was deflected northward, creating a strong western boundary current that became the Gulf Stream. The land bridge so constructed provided a highway for opossums, armadillos, and porcupines to cross from South America to North America, while bears, cats, dogs, horses, and llamas made the southward journey. By making and breaking connections between adjacent continents and oceans in this way, the movement of plates guides the course of biological evolution, encouraging speciation on isolated continents and merging formerly independent ecosystems on colliding continents.

Of course, like the Romans, plate tectonics has its drawbacks, as the folk in Japan, Indonesia, and Iran know only too well. In the geological past, widespread volcanism,—heralding the rifting of Pangea and the birth of the North Atlantic—resulted in the emplacement of a huge volume of volcanic rocks known as the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province within North America, Europe, and Africa, an event that was coeval with a mass extinction that ended the Triassic period 201 million years ago.

Other large volcanic eruptions, marking the arrival of plumes of hot rock from the mantle below, have caused even greater chaos, disgorging basalt lavas on a continental scale. Notable examples are the Siberian Traps and Deccan Traps, the eruption of which produced mass extinctions responsible for terminating the Permian and Cretaceous periods, respectively. On the other hand, it might be argued that, by clearing the planet of “unwanted” reptiles, these catastrophes opened the way for the evolution and spread of mammals and, eventually, bipedal apes.

Hence, and quite remarkably, plate tectonics has evolved from a geometrical description of moving paving stones into the crucial factor that permits the emergence of what geophysicist Bob Stern calls “technological species” here, and perhaps, elsewhere.

Featured image credit: Horst and Graben: Basin and Range by NPS Natural Resources. Public domain via Flickr . 

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Advancements by women throughout history [Timeline]

“It is well known that women receive little or no attention in traditional history writing.” In honour of women’s history month, we will be looking at the vital role of women in history. Based on numerous journal articles and covering various periods between the 1300s and 1950s the timeline highlights key figures and movements that contributed towards the advancement of women across various regions.

Featured image credit: Votes for Women at 21, 1927 via LSE Library. CC0 via Wikimedia Commons. 

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Acknowledging identity, privilege, and oppression in music therapy

As clinical music therapy professionals who are goal- and solution-oriented, how much time do we spend considering our client’s experience outside the therapy room? How might taking the time to learn about a client’s multifaceted identity affect the therapeutic relationship? Furthermore, how do our own personal identities, beliefs, and experiences affect our relationships with clients? In answering these questions, we begin to scratch the surface of making our practice more intersectional.

Intersectionality is particularly important when considering the ways in which marginalized and oppressed identities are interlinked and how they create lived experiences that are different from those with privileged identities or “social statuses.”

Theories of intersectionality emerged from U.S. Black feminist and women of color activist communities who saw themselves omitted from dominant movements for social justice, including feminism that foregrounded White women’s issues, as well as civil rights activism focused on Black men’s experiences. The original metaphor of traffic in an intersection, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, sought to describe how Black women’s identities often make them the target of multiple, simultaneous forms of oppression (e.g., racism and sexism).

But intersectionality goes far beyond merely describing how people embody multiple social identities—it helps us understand how people are differently situated in society because of those identities.

So, what does intersectionality have to do with music therapy? 

Essential documents in the field of music therapy highlight the importance of being a culturally responsive clinician. For example, the AMTA Professional Competencies indicates a music therapist must “demonstrate awareness of the influence of race, ethnicity, language, religion, marital status, sexual orientation, age, ability, socioeconomic status, or political affiliation on the therapeutic process.” Furthermore, music therapists must demonstrate knowledge of and skill in working with culturally diverse populations. Thus, whether intentionally acknowledged or not, dynamic systems of privilege and oppression play a role in the therapeutic process and client-therapist relationship.

Because these facets of identity consist of interwoven relationships, consideration of intersectionality is crucial to meet professional standards of practice. By acknowledging the interconnected pieces of an individual’s identity, we move away from the danger of creating harmful stereotypes or neglecting components of an individual’s identity that play crucial roles in the way they move through the world.

Furthermore, as a profession we must consider the message our field may be sending if the identities of underrepresented and marginalized individuals are not reflected in the music therapists that serve them.

How can we commit to intersectionality?

Sociocultural considerations have historically been supplemental concerns within clinical research and practice; however, they really belong at the core. For example, undergraduate music therapy programs have traditionally included one course on multicultural music with the goal of helping students move towards cultural competency. Conversely, a truly intersectional approach would acknowledge that cultural differences extend far beyond just music and should be woven throughout the curriculum. Additionally, intersectional training would be sensitive to who is producing and represented in the curriculum and would insist upon inclusion of research done by and about individuals with marginalized identities (i.e., scholarship produced by and for people of color, individuals with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, etc.).

Furthermore, the idea of becoming culturally responsive (rather than culturally competent,) would be viewed as a life-long process of continual self-reflection and critical engagement with cultures that differ from one’s own versus, not a skill to be mastered.

Attending to intersectionality requires we start listening to and mainstreaming voices that have been ignored in theory and research. These unheard voices are scholars of feminist theory, disability studies, critical race theory, queer theory, and burgeoning fields like transgender studies.

Incorporating principles of critical theories in music therapy opens possibilities for progressive models of practice, such as “queer music therapy.” Even further, applying such approaches should involve continuous evaluation and refining. As in our discussion of striving toward continuous self-reflection and critical engagement with intersectionality in training and practice, research must be held to the same standard.

Engaging with intersectionality

It is essential for music therapists to actively engage with intersectionality in research and practice, with the ultimate goal of improving outcomes for all our clients. The only way for intersectionality theory to create any real change is to learn how to apply what we learn and begin to think more critically about putting intersectional principles into action.

This can often be the most intimidating piece of working to improve our practice because it requires a great deal of cultural responsiveness, self-reflexivity, humility, vulnerability, and a willingness to unequivocally advocate for underrepresented voices within our client base and profession.

However, the field of music therapy is due for a transformation—and it is likely not alone. Thus, here are some steps we’ve identified that clinicians and researchers can take in an effort to work towards the goal of moving towards more intersectional practice:

Read and engage with the texts of critical theory scholars and activists;
Start or join in critical dialogues with colleagues about how we can make the profession more representative of and affirming for members of marginalized and underrepresented groups;
Carry out and propel culturally responsive research, including through collaborations with members of underrepresented groups in the field; and
Insist upon anti-oppressive practice for marginalized clients.

Featured image credit: Photo by Daniel van Beek. Used with permission.

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An exercise in etymological bodybuilding

To an etymologist the names of some organs and body parts pose almost insoluble problems. A quick look at some of them may be of interest to our readers. I think that in the past, I have discussed only the words brain and body (21 February 2007: brain; 14 October 2015: body). Both etymologies are hard, for the words are local: brain has a rather inconspicuous German cognate, and the same holds for body. I risked offering tentative suggestions, which were followed by useful, partly critical comments. As usual, I see no reason to repeat what I said in the past and would like to stress only one idea. Etymologists, when at a loss for a solution, often say that the inscrutable word could enter Indo–European or Germanic, or Romance from some unknown, unrecorded language (such languages are called substrates).

The human body: a great etymological conundrum. Image credit: physicalculture201908macf by Internet Archive Book Images. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Since the speakers of Indo-European colonized the territories once inhabited by the tribes whose languages are lost, there is no doubt that the new settlers borrowed some native words.  This is especially true of plant, animal, and place names, as well as of certain cultural artifacts, but, when we are told that a common word came from a foreign (unidentifiable!) source, we should be on our guard. Obscure words are plentiful. Perhaps we have no way of recovering their origin, for who said that modern historians can solve all the riddles of the past? I keep rubbing in this fact, because the etymology of eye, ear, head, and quite a few others is partly beyond recovery. Lament our ignorance, but beware of the facile resort to the substrate.

In our survey of kidneys, liver, lungs, and the rest, we first notice heart. This word is indeed Indo-European.  Greek had kardíā (cardiology and the rest are from it). Latin cor, cordis and the others in the related languages have preserved a variant of the same word. But a list of cognates, even ever so long, is not an etymology. We want to know how the heart got its name. The most natural approach to words is via the function of “things.” Did people millennia ago know the function of the brain, heart, and the rest? In my discussion of brain, I suggested that brain was akin to bran: people saw our “gray matter” (usually inside the broken skull of an enemy) but had no clue to what it was for. Likewise, watching one’s enemy bleed and discovering the role of blood in a living organism are entirely different things.

We associate the heart with all kinds of emotions. Hence Heart of Darkness, Heart Break House, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Tell-Tale Heart, and the rest (I have cited only the most famous titles that occurred to me).  It is rather unlikely that at the dawn of civilization, people spoke about a cruel man breaking a girl’s heart, about hearty meals, or heartfelt gratitude. Yet there have been attempts to connect the Indo-European word for “heart” with words for “trust.” Heart has been compared with some Sanskrit words of comparable meanings (mainly “trust”) and also with Latin credo “I believe.” More likely, this connection is due to what is called folk etymology, that is, a late association of historically different but similar-sounding words that seem to belong together. However, the heart must have been understood as the most vital part of the organism very long ago, so that the step from “the center of the body” to “the seat of feeling” was not very long.

The chiaroscuro of the heart is unpredictable.

In wanderings among the words for “heart,” especially promising are the Slavic cognates: Russian serdtse and others like it. Serd– corresponds to Latin cord– sound for sound. In this blog, I have often mentioned the so-called First Consonant Shift. For example, Latin pater is related to Engl. father, because (if for the moment we stay with the first consonant) Germanic f regularly corresponds to non-Germanic p. By the same token, Latin cent (pronounced as kent) is related to Engl. hund– in hundred, because, according to the First Consonant Shift, non-Germanic k is related to Germanic h. But that correspondence works only for the western Indo-European languages, while in the eastern group, the correspondence is k to s. The Russian for “hundred” is sto. Fortified by the above-given formula, we understand the logic of the triads cent ~ hund(red) ~ sto and cord- ~ heart ~ serd-tse. The vowels alternate by ablaut, another phenomenon that I mention with great regularity.

Unlike cord– and heart, serd-tse is rather transparent, because it is related to such words as sred-i “among” (stress on the second syllable) and sered–ina “middle” (stress on the third syllable). Assuming that Slavic provides the desired clue, heart will be, from the etymological point of view, an organ in the middle of the breast. However, even this result is not entirely flawless.  Such is the tortuous path to the etymology of a word with numerous indubitable cognates and a seemingly transparent meaning. It is no wonder that other cases are harder.

From heart to heart. Image credit: The Wizard of Oz by The Dress Up Place. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

For comparison, I have chosen the least Indo-European word I could think of, namely, groin. The name of this part of our anatomy varies from language to language. Latin inguen (usually in the plural), from which the Romance languages have the name of the groin, probably (!) meant “gland.”  German Leiste seems to go back to the meaning “border” and has the English congener list “border,” which those of us who are not versed in Middle English but occasionally read chivalric romances will recognize only from the plural lists “an arena for tournaments.”  German Weiche, a synonym of Leiste, means “a soft place” (no connection with Weiche “switch between rails,” called “points” in British English). Even the Scandinavian languages do not have a common word for “groin”: Icelandic nári is “a narrow place.” Norwegian and Danish lyske possibly (!) has the same root as Engl. loose (Icelandic ljóski also exists). Swedish speakers fell victim to the already mentioned folk etymology and changed the word to ljumske, so that it looks like meaning “tepid.”

Occasional ties exist: one of the names may be the same in German and Dutch, another name is common to all the Scandinavian languages, or an English cognate may turn up, but, in principle, there is “infinite variety.” For completeness sake, I can mention Slavic pakh, a word of questionable origin; it has nothing to do with pakhat’ (stress on the second syllable) “to plow” or pakhnut’ “to smell.”

Few hearts are broken forever. Image credit: Broken Love Heart bandage by Adhesive bandage drawing nevit. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Why is it that heart has such venerable roots, while groin does not? Was the word for the groin slang or at least “a popular word” with ill-smelling connotations? Engl. groin goes back to Middle Engl. grynde; the loss of d has not been explained. Similar-sounding Old English words meaning “depression; dimple; snare” exist, but it is not clear whether they have anything to do with groin. The vowel in groin was long i (ī), and the expected modern form should have been grine. This “cockneyfied” pronunciation is not unique to groin: boil and joist also sound like “vulgar” forms. On the other hand, groin might have been influenced by loin, a noun of French origin. Don’t feel disheartened and gird up your loins for more riddles.

Featured Image: The lists: knights jousting. Image credit: Spectacular Knight by PublicDomainPictures. CC0 via Pixabay. 

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Social media and plastic surgery: quality over quantity

There is no shortage of stress factors in anyone’s daily life, but how does the stress of social media effect plastic surgeons who are required each day to bring their A game to every operative procedure they perform? As initially conceived, social media was intended to connect people globally. But now, it’s the cause of the third leading psychological disorder in the United States—social anxiety disorder.

Inherently, people do not like change and often like technology even less. Think back on any groundbreaking innovation and you will likely recall the initial pushback and dissent that happened just before these gadgets and inventions quickly became essential to daily life—and then disappeared for all eternity. If you’re not convinced, try to recall the last time you used a payphone or a VCR.

Social media has had two dramatic effects on the daily life of plastic surgeons: 1) We now communicate in “real time,” and many find it hard to “shut down” for more than just a few minutes each day. With products increasing the mobility of technology, such as the “shower case” that allows you to bring your cell phone into the shower, you never have to log off. 2) The expectation of 24/7 availability causes unavoidable stress. Think about a time before laptops when you left the office (and your computer) and couldn’t work (even if you wanted to) until you returned the next day. Have technology and social media—specifically Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—turned us all into burned-out workaholics?

Physician burnout is not a new phenomenon. An article by Prendergast and colleagues in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal defined burnout as a state of physical and mental exhaustion, the three main components of which are emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. The article references a litany of articles pointing to causes of physician burnout across all specialties. Especially among younger doctors—who check their phones dozens of times daily—maintaining social media profiles and responsiveness can certainly take a toll, reduce time for other, more physical activities, and contribute to added stress and feelings of burnout. In “When Love Is Not Enough”, I suggest this problem begins early and there is a need to address burnout in medical school, not only when surgeons graduate and begin to practice. Following strategies to avoid physician burnout and improve the work-life balance is critical, since 46% of doctors report struggling with burnout.

Have technology and social media—specifically Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—turned us all into burned-out workaholics?

The adoption of social media use by millennials has led to the need for guidelines surrounding ethical use. Recently, plastic surgery residency programs have begun to utilize social media, in particular Instagram, which has shown meteoric growth among residents. A recently accepted article in Aesthetic Surgery Journal by Chandawarkar and colleagues indicates that the use of social media among residents has many benefits and may increase a trainee’s influence. The need for creation and adoption of guidelines speaks to the broader responsibility and need for appropriate social media use in an era where technology is developing rapidly.

Add to this the natural predilections of doctors—a specialty that in some instances mandates how many consecutive hours they’re allowed to work—and you’ll recognize how easy it is to fall down the rabbit hole, and how hard it can often be to climb out. You might set out to spend just a few minutes catching up on Facebook or posting on Twitter, only to realize more than an hour has passed. You might also find yourself following hashtags and being heavily (and unduly) influenced by what you read.

I have observed how plastic surgeons engage social media as a marketing tool though some have refined their craft to provide more than just a “sales pitch”—they offer real value, research, and the occasional comic relief to followers. Patients now follow their doctors (or potential doctors) on social media as a mechanism by which to vet them. What do they post? What is their family like? Are they kind-hearted and skilled enough to perform a particular procedure? Are they ego-centric or condescending?

Every post tells a story. And there are many potential interpretations to each story. Someone is always watching and judging.

Finding the appropriate balance in life, as in work, shows the human side of a surgeon’s life and speaks (potentially) to his or her mental health. A negative byproduct of social media is the “compare and despair” factor that leaves some feeling “lesser than” because they don’t have the same capacity to post photos from Greece or Italy or be seen with key opinion leaders in the field. This may add stress or cause negative feelings. The Aesthetic Surgery Journal recently conducted an informal Twitter survey, asking for an opinion about whether technology/social media causes stress. A surprising 76% of respondents said “yes,” 19% said “no,” and 5% weren’t sure.” Just as academics experience pressure to “publish or perish,” plastic surgeons strive for perfection because that is every patient’s expectation. The perfect nose, the perfect augmentation, the perfectly contoured body—the list is long when it comes to surgical procedures. Could this preoccupation with perfection be adding stress to both surgeons and consumers?

On the bright side, social media allows us to share many success stories in the field of plastic surgery and to educate and mentor, which yields far-reaching positive effects. Social media also allows us to promote our specialty and engage with patients in a casual manner that was impossible ten years ago. Plastic surgeons are on social media to promote their practices and gain new patients, who may not have otherwise been interested in a surgical or non-surgical procedure if it were not for their social media profile and connections.

Does the use of social media translate to more plastic surgery patients—yielding a good return on investment (ROI)? According to Gould and Nazarian—yes—social media has a relatively high ROI. This is the first study we’ve seen to quantify the ROI of social media in plastic surgery.  In this study, the total revenue return for each month was divided by the invested amount for each source including Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, and RealSelf. The authors recommend social media and branding campaigns for start-up practices, and Instagram for direct-to-consumer marketing followed by Yelp, RealSelf, and Facebook to maintain the practice. They caution that any time or money investment should be closely tracked so ROI can be ascertained over time and to ensure the growth of the practice.

Social media is still in its infancy, and it remains to be seen how the positive and negative exposure will affect our lives in the long-term. If we remind ourselves regularly of the goal to add value to the community and help when we can vs out-posting our connections, the true reward will be found in personal engagements and meaningful contacts as opposed to inflating one’s own ego by outdoing others with quantity over quality.

Featured image credit: “Mobile Phone” by geralt. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Humanism—from Italian to secular

Humanism doesn’t get much good press these days. In many circles it comes accompanied by an adjective—secular—and a diatribe:

A war of philosophy and of what defines morality is being fought daily in the media, judicial benches, and legislative halls across the Western world. … On one side stand fundamentalist Protestantism and conservative Catholicism and on the other side secular humanism. The “religious right” claims that humanism is dragging the United States into an abyss of crime and relativism. … But throughout the 1800s proponents of humanism claimed scientific discovery discounted biblical accuracy. Evolution became the humanists’ answer to creation. Eventually, the religious beliefs of deism and the humanism of the 18th century evolved into modern secular humanism.

Now I don’t want to discuss religion per se here, which is something my mother taught me is unwise (except among very close friends.)What I do want to do is to suggest that once we historicize the term “humanism,” this binary understanding, like many others, is shown to be false.



Tomb of Leonardo Bruni, sculpted by Bernardo Rossellino by Sailko. CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The term “humanist” first came into regular usage in the early Italian Renaissance. Its nuances vary depending on which of the three key twentieth-century historians of humanism we choose to foreground. Paul Oskar Kristeller, for example, explains that the humanists came together in an effort to make two changes in the educational practices of their day. First, they worked to replace the seven medieval liberal arts, which were divided into language –and mathematically–based sections, with five disciplines that focused on what it means to be human: grammar and rhetoric, which we need to communicate with one another; moral philosophy, which we need to act properly; history, which is the record of our actions; and poetry, which reflects the artistic part of the human spirit. And second, we need to take as models the best people who ever lived, the Greeks and Romans.

Hans Baron, on the other hand, emphasized the social and political environment in which humanism developed. Zoom in to Florence at the turn of the fifteenth century. The upper classes were divided into two camps, one that favored a withdrawal from the aggravations of everyday life to study the classics, and another that favored a life of political involvement focused on the present. But grave danger threatened when the ruler of Milan bore down on Florence with a hostile army. Facing this threat, the two camps came together to defend the republican values of Florence, both with the sword and the pen, using Greek and Latin literature for propaganda alongside cannons and arrows for defense: Leonardo Bruni, for example, referenced Tacitus to argue that republics produced better people than monarchies. The Milanese ruler died before he could take the city, but the civic humanism that was born then in Renaissance Florence endured in various forms for centuries.

Finally, Eugenio Garin looked at humanism from another angle. Medieval thought tended toward the abstract and theoretical: how many angels, one might speculate, could dance on the head of a pin? Renaissance humanism, however, turned to the practical and concrete, to how real people had once lived, in specific historical circumstances. Our curiosity about the past should properly center on Greece and Rome, whose inhabitants were particularly interesting and demand to be understood as different from us, and worth studying in their differences.

So what is missing from all three of these explanations? The answer: a hostility to Christianity—indeed, there was no fundamental incompatibility between humanism and religion during this period. As a number of scholars have noted, Renaissance people, like people today, could be more or less pious, but unlike today, atheism as an intellectual category did not really exist yet.

Vitruvian Man drawing by Leonardo d Vinci, c. 1490, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice by unknown. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Francesco Petrarca, the father of Renaissance humanism, held a minor position in the church; Ambrogio Traversari, a well-known Florentine humanist, was a monk; and Basilios Bessarion was a cardinal. The major intellectual project of Marsilio Ficino, another famous Florentine humanist, was to demonstrate the compatibility of Plato and Christianity, and he wrote a spirited defense of his faith; Maffeo Vegio divided his literary output between religious works and classicizing literature. Desiderius Erasmus, who is probably the most famous intellectual of the period, is another example of a scholar who devoted his life to integrating religion and humanistic studies.

To be sure, the Renaissance brought shifts in emphasis away from the medieval focus on the abstractions of systematic theology. The favorite Bible verse of the humanists, for example, is Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”’ Attention shifted to the Incarnation, and people meditated on the life of Jesus, on his humanity as well as his divinity. The life and work of Plato mattered, but so did the life and work of Jesus.

So humanism, historically positioned, should indeed come accompanied by an adjective, but a different one: Christian.

Featured image credit: The Creation of Adam from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, 1511 by Michelangelo Buonarroti, by sailko. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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The hippie trail and the search for enlightenment

The Hippie Trail was one of the last, great expressions of the counterculture during the mid-1950s to late 1970s. Headed to the East, the most celebrated route was from London to Kathmandu, although many stopped in India or went on to Australasia, and there were subsidiary routes to the Mediterranean, to Morocco and to the Middle East. When the overland path was all but closed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution, travellers found other routes and other destinations. The Hippie Trail and the Hippie Movement remains the most iconic journey, and perhaps the most iconic happening, respectively.

Perhaps influenced by Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel On the Road, which celebrated travel as a way of life, by the end of the 1960s about one million young Americans had taken to the road in the United States, and another 800,000 were travelling in Europe. This era of cheap mass travel, together with the availability of transatlantic commercial flights and the strength of the US dollar, acted as a catalyst for tourist travel.  However, some chose to travel to the East, beyond the parameters of Western culture and outside the usual supportive tourist infrastructure. Why was this? Any why was India so popular?

The answer might be found in Kerouac’s insistence that life on the road was a route to enlightenment. In the years following World War Two, and especially in the 1960s, many Americans turned to the East for answers to, or escape from the turbulent, frightening and confusing Cold War world they now lived in. The Vietnam War loomed large in everyone’s minds. From 1941 to the 1975 the United States had gone to war with three different Asian nations. These wars helped keep south-east Asia in the foreground of American consciousness; and for many young people their first experience of South East Asia was as conscripts in the US military. Others, however, wanted to experience the East on less confrontational terms.

[I]t was the modern-day equivalent of Thomas Jefferson’s assertion that the ‘pursuit of happiness’ was a foundational American aspiration.

The notion of a more spiritual East proved attractive. Non-Western religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism thrived in post-World War Two United States because they offered alternatives to traditional American religious practices. In that era, many Americans lost faith in the powers of organized religion: until the 1960s, most Americans belonged to the seven main Protestant churches, and there were also thriving Jewish and Catholic communities. While the post-war ‘baby boom’ supplied a new generation of parishioners for these mainstream churches, it also provided a generation that questioned the tradition roles of organised religion and authority in general.

It was Buddhism that proved most attractive to American hippie trailers. A number of key texts had raised its profile in the United States, such as Paul Carus’ The Gospel of Buddha (1894), Dwight Goddard’s Buddhist Bible (1932). However, in the 1950s it was the works of T.D. Suzuki, Jack Kerouac, Alan Watts and others in the Beat Movement that were most influential. In addition, Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha (1922), was published in the U.S. in 1951 and quickly became an easy intro to basic Buddhist themes. And Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience; A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead (1964) suggested enlightenment could be found in Tibetan Buddhist writings.

Until the 1960s, Buddhist communities in the United States comprised mainly of Chinese and Japanese immigrants, and were situated predominantly on the west coast and in the Hawaiian Islands. However, changes in American immigration laws in 1965 resulted in increased immigration from Asia. As a result of these changes, the number of Buddhists in the United States swelled considerably, and Buddhism reached California, New York, Texas and Illinois. But the Buddhism of the immigrant communities and the new Buddhism of the young Americans were very different. The most recognised voices of the new spiritual culture were overwhelmingly Euro-Americans, and they embraced dharma (going with the flow of nature and cosmic law to attain contentment) as if it was the modern-day equivalent of Thomas Jefferson’s assertion that the ‘pursuit of happiness’ was a foundational American aspiration.

Over-simplified, radiant, utopian ideas concerning Eastern religions circulated widely in the late 1960s. ‘No anti-war demonstration would be complete without a hirsute, be-cowbelled contingent of holy men, bearing joss sticks and intoning the Hare Krishna’ noted Theodore Roszak. And no self-respecting rock festival would be complete, it seemed, without a performance from Ravi Shankar (most famously at Monterery in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969), or a festival opening address by an Indian holy man such as Sri Swami Satchidananda, who led the Woodstock audience in a chant of ‘Hari Hari Hari Om.’

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, known widely in the West as the Hare Krishna movement, was founded in New York in 1966. The first Buddhist centre was established in the United States in Vermont in 1970 and by 1987 there were 429 such centres. However, those seeking deeper contacts with Eastern religions often felt the need to travel to their spiritual homelands, and trip along the Hippie Trail served as a rite-of-passage pilgrimage to their spiritual goal. There was no shortage of colourful figures to attract them. For example, Sai Baba, a Hindu mystic, performed acts of materialisation and healing at his ashram. It probably helped that he resembled Jimi Hendrix with a bouffant Afro hairstyle. And Rishikesh, on the banks of the River Ganges, and a pilgrimage site for Buddhists, became widely known in the West after the Beatles’ visit there in February 1968 to study under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Many followed in their footsteps.

Many travellers perhaps naively imagined the East as a cure for the ailments of the West, but there is no doubting the sincerity of their hopes. They really believed that a journey to the East could lead them to some form of enlightenment (and a few even found it). Almost all, though, speak of the profound effect the trail has had on their lives, and reflect on its enduring positive influence.

Featured image credit: View from the Hotel Niagra, Herat, October 1977 (Photograph © Bill Christie, reproduced by permission)

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