In the letter through which Dungal demonstrates to Charlemagne the mathematical rationality of the two eclipses of sun of 810 there is no reference to the allegorical model of the universe promoted ...in patristics from Clement of Alexandria to Cosmas Indicopleustes. Inspired by In Somnium Scipionis, where Macrobius synthesises the astronomic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world, it shows that during the Carolingian period the pre-Christian cosmological model, which proves that we are in mid first European Renaissance. The originality of the letter consists in the simple answer of actuality that Dungal suggests to the emperor: the predictable periodicity of the astronomic events proves that their association with tragic moments of the personal life is related to superstition, namely to pseudo-science. In the following lines, I propose an analysis of the text of this letter from the perspective of the sources, of structure and of pre-Christian cosmology elements.
The article examines the media discourse of risk and stigma which developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in India, employing the theoretical frameworks of Mary Douglas and Erving Goffman. ...Accessing the Factiva database archive, the authors analysed a total of 139 stigma-linked media reports, using the Discourse Network Analyzer (DNA) to identify thematic groups of beliefs and related actors contributing to the risk discourse on the contagion. The results exhibit a clear difference in opinion on various stigma-related beliefs among the individuals diagnosed or assumed susceptible to COVID-19, including the issue of disclosing identities. In India, domestic actors have dominated the media discourse, particularly national government agencies, rather than intergovernmental organisations or foreign governments. The media content analysis in this article shows that new hierarchies have emerged based on confirmed or suspected contact with the disease along with reinforcement of traditional myths and superstitions, leading to discrimination against the quarantined individuals, their families, healthcare staff and socially marginalised communities.
This study focuses on the phenomenon of using superstition as a decision heuristic in strategic decision-making. We introduce the construct of superstitious heuristic, which is defined as a decision ...shortcut based on superstitious beliefs. The superstitious heuristic is commonly used in strategic decision-making in various cultures and can lead to seemingly puzzling decisions that have strategic consequences for the firm. It is also distinctly different from other major decision heuristics (i.e., heuristics-and-biases, fast-and-frugal heuristics, expert intuition, and simple rules) and can be used over the latter, especially under high uncertainty. Nevertheless, this heuristic type has not yet received much attention in the strategy literature, presumably because its usage in strategic decision-making is less prevalent in Western contexts where most heuristics research takes place. In this study, we initiate an inquiry into this phenomenon through two objectives: (1) introducing the construct of superstitious heuristic with conceptualization and measurement and (2) probing the executive antecedents to the superstitious heuristic. Our study not only brings the superstitious heuristic to the attention of strategy scholars but also lays the conceptual and empirical foundation for advancing strategy research on this heuristic. By delineating the profile of executives who are prone to employing this heuristic in making strategic choices, our study also contributes to upper echelons research on the use of heuristics in strategic decision processes.
In Study 1, 103 children ages 4 through 10 answered questions about their concept of and belief in luck, and completed a story task assessing their use of luck as an explanation for events. The ...interview captured a curvilinear trajectory of children's belief in luck from tentative belief at age 4 to full belief at age 6, weakening belief at age 8, and significant skepticism by age 10. The youngest children appeared to think of luck simply as a positive outcome; with age, children increasingly considered the unexpected nature of lucky outcomes and many came to view luck as synonymous with chance. On the story task, younger children attributed a stronger role to luck in explaining events than did older children. Studies 2 and 3 explored 2 potential sources of children's concepts. Study 2 explored adult use of the words luck and lucky, and found that most of this input consisted in using lucky to refer to positive outcomes, although the nature of use changed with the ages of the children. In Study 3, we examined children's storybooks about luck and found them to be rich potential sources of children's concepts.
In three studies, we found that reading information in a foreign language can suppress common superstitious beliefs. Participants read scenarios in either their native or a foreign language. In each ...scenario, participants were asked to imagine performing an action (e.g., submitting a job application) under a superstitious circumstance (e.g., broken mirror, four-leaf clover) and to rate how they would feel. Overall, foreign language prompted less negative feelings towards bad-luck scenarios and less positive feelings towards good-luck scenarios, while it exerted no influence on non-superstitious, control scenarios. We attribute these findings to language-dependent memory. Superstitious beliefs are typically acquired and used in contexts involving the native language. As a result, the native language evokes them more forcefully than a foreign language.
Male baldness was a very common experience but it has rarely been considered by historians of any period or place. This article argues that baldness reveals a precariousness and vanity to masculinity ...in late nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century Britain. Baldness limited men's ability to self‐fashion their appearance. It made them the target of jokes, marked the fact they were getting older, undermined their looks and, perhaps, made them less attractive to women. There was thus a vigorous market for cures and preventatives. Such products show how deep superstitions and irrational thinking could run, but understandings of the condition were also rooted in the social and cultural conditions of the day. The glamour of Hollywood, a keep‐fit culture, growing advertising of male‐grooming products and the fading of hat wearing from fashion, all intensified interwar anxieties around baldness. Not everyone worried about baldness, however, and men's feelings about their hair owed much to personality and circumstance. Baldness thus not only reveals the precarious nature of masculinity but also its inconsistent and inherently personal dimensions.
Abstract
The late nineteenth-century age of empire was also an age of anti-superstition. In China, Western missionaries, diplomats and travellers labelled practices that resisted Western technologies ...and ideas as ‘superstitious’. This article examines how a group of Qing scholar-officials, all members of the diplomatic corps, interpreted and ultimately defended these customs. Conventionally viewed as tragic figures unable to transcend a ‘Sinocentric’ world view, they were deeply embedded in the global circulations of empire. During their time in Europe and the United States, they compared Western culture and the development of capitalism with the changes they saw in China. For these cosmopolitan actors, Chinese popular cultural practices offered potential sources of anti-imperial resistance to Western presence in China. Yet they also had differing, at times conflicting, visions for how the Chinese state should relate to the ‘superstitious’. Some argued that they needed to be kept in place, undisturbed from the onslaught of Western influence; others believed the ‘superstitious’ could be mobilized as an anti-imperial force.
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