Hasil untuk "History of Great Britain"

Chamila Gamage

This paper frames calculus as a global, centuries-long development rather than a subject that began only with Newton and Leibniz. Drawing on ideas from Greek, Indian, Islamic, and later European mathematics, it highlights how concepts like infinity, area, motion, and continuous change slowly evolved through solving problems and cultural exchange. I argue that bringing this history into the classroom helps students see calculus as more than a set of procedures: it becomes a story of human creativity and persistence. By revisiting the questions early mathematicians struggled with, students can better appreciate and better understand the core ideas behind the formulas they use today.

Jerzy S Respondek

The author was encouraged to write this review by numerous enquiries from researchers all over the world, who needed a ready-to-use algorithm for the inversion of confluent Vandermonde matrices which works in quadratic time for any values of the parameters allowed by the definition, including the case of large root multiplicities of the characteristic polynomial. Article gives the history of the title special matrix since 1891 and surveys algorithms for solving linear systems with the title class matrix and inverting it. In particular, it presents, also by example, a numerical algorithm which does not use symbolic computations and is ready to be implemented in a general-purpose programming language or in a specific mathematical package.

Chloé Clément

This essay aims to demonstrate the interdependent relationship between self-representation and collective identity in the militant suffrage campaign by focusing on two early suffragette autobiographies, Emmeline Pankhurst’s My Own Story and Constance Lytton’s Prisons and Prisoners. Both published in 1914, these autobiographies establish a common militant experience in the suffrage campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) through the personal accounts and testimonies of their authors. Transformed into political tools, these autobiographies blur the limits between private experience and public sharing. Constance Lytton and Emmeline Pankhurst indeed share how personal narratives fit with political objectives and manifest a collective purpose: that of promoting and legitimizing the militant suffrage campaign. Studying Lytton’s and Pankhurst’s militant experiences portrayed in their autobiographies, observing the reception of these personal writings, or identifying the way the militant spirit is built through reproductions of personal experiences will therefore demonstrate how self-representation shaped and supported the WSPU’s collective identity. The reproduction of imprisonments, hunger strikes or other militant actions assert defining characteristics of militant experience and contribute to emphasise a collective identity built upon self-sacrifice, devotion, and martyrdom. While these autobiographies demonstrate how the self-representation of individual experiences had a collective purpose and influence over a community, they also describe how notions of self-representation and collective identity are reciprocal. Lytton’s autobiography, for instance, represents her journey as a suffragette who sought to fit in by adapting her militancy to the movement’s collective identity. Therefore, My Own Story and Prisons and Prisoners not only act as platforms to share one’s story of the suffrage movement but also demonstrate the political power of personal experiences in creating a spirituality that included personal militant experiences into a greater collective environment. These early suffrage autobiographies thus become essential tools in questioning and understanding the relationship between personal and collective, private and public.

Erofeeva G.I.

The article provides an overview of the documentary heritage of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. Special attention is paid to foreign archives. The documents reflect the personal life, military service of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, his hobbies, leisure, foreign trips, the Orel period, etc. The pages of the biography of Alexei Sergeyevich Matveev, the Grand Duke’s business manager, are also highlighted. In addition, the article contains letters and telegrams from the Grand Duke of Perm, the place of exile of Mikhail Alexandrovich. Previously, these documents were not fully involved. The materials are in a private collection, the archive of the P. Gray family, Great Britain. The personality of the Grand Duke is one of the key figures of a turning point in Russian history. From 1899 to 1904. he was the heir to the throne of the Russian Empire. On March 3, 1917, Nicholas II signed the manifesto of abdication in favor of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. Thus, the introduction of materials from foreign archives into scientific circulation will make it possible to supplement the pages of the biography of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich and help form the funds and exposition of future museums dedicated to the Grand Duke in Perm and the locality of the Bryansk region.

Arzu Melek Ozgumus

It is always very interesting to read the German history, which sheds light on a nation which has been built in less than two centuries and hit almost the top of Human Development Index. The origins of its economic and political dominance can be traced back to the beginning of the German Empire’s formation. In Blood and Iron, Katja Hoyer delves into the rise of German Empire and its eventual fall, leading to the First World War, a pivotal event that reshaped the European map. In the first chapter of the book, Hoyer covers the period between 1815-1871, beginning with the Vienna Congress in 1815, where Austria-Hungary and Prussia started their competition on the hegemony over the German states – which ultimately resolved in favor of Prussia. After defeating Napoleon, Prussia gained Rhineland and Ruhr coalfields during this period hinting at their burgeoning industrial and economic power. Although the German Confederation created at that time was led by Austria, the balance of power began to shift with the rise of Otto von Bismarck in the politics. Bismarck was a junker, landowner nobility, who became a member of the Prussian Parliament in 1847. Following his terms as Ambassador in France and Russia, he was recalled to Berlin by Wilhelm I in 1862 to support passing the military budget. This was the beginning of a relationship between Wilhelm I and Bismarck that will have a defining impact in history, a relationship Hojeremphasizes as having a profound impact on German politics. Starting from this point in the book, Hoyer frequently reminds the reader of the famous “blood and iron” speech of Bismarck, in which he emphasizes that Germany's fate would be determined through decisive military and industrial strength. This speech becomes a recurring theme in Hoyer's analysis.  Bismarck’s Reich, the second chapter of the book, focuses on the years when Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm ruled as the Chancellor and Emperor of the German Empire respectively, from 1871 to 1888. It begins with Wilhelm, the King of Prussia, becoming the Emperor of the German Empire, and getting the title of Kaiser Wilhelm on 18 January 1871 in Versailles Place after the defeat of France in the Franco-German was of 1870-71. The chapter introduces the governmental structure of the Reich, which consisted of the Kaiser, Imperial Chancellor, the Bundesrat (the upper of parliament), and Reichstag (the parliament). Hoyer meticulously examines how Bismarck ensures the central role given to Prussia, and how he uses his power and position to create a German national identity. She explores how Bismarck implements a cultural strategy, Kulturkampf, to suppress the religious identities, especially of Catholic minorities under Protestant Prussian rule. Kulturkampf also aimed at the secularization of education and this has been a milestone in the creation of young generations with German identity. Despite resistance and the rise of pro-Catholic Centre Party (Deutsche Zentrumspartei) in politics, Hojer argues the enduring impact of this through the end of the book when discussing the First World War. In this chapter, the writer also briefly mentions the Jewish Question, as it was a significant debate around the same time. She emphasizes events like financial crisis or migration of Polish Jews taking over jobs of Germans which increased anti-Semitism. However, both Kaiser and the Chancellor viewed the Jewish issue as a matter of religion, rather than one of race. Through careful analysis, Hoyer captures the complexities of governance, cultural strategies, and social tensions during this formative period of the German Empire. In this chapter, Hoyer also underlines diplomatic skills of Bismarck. While she doesn’t mention the Concert of Europe when discussing Bismarck’s foreign policy, she clearly indicates how carefully he keeps a balance between all European powers. She criticizes him, in the following parts of the book, for building all his foreign policy around himself, which was doomed to fail after his resignation. The writer kept the third chapter of the book, Three Emperors and a Chancellor, covering the period between 1888 and 1890 notably brief, as this was a transition period. The chapter succinctly outlines key events such as the death of Kaiser Wilhelm, the brief reign of his son Freidrich III, wo passed away in just 99 days after his coronation, and the ascension of son Wilhelm II as the last Kaiser. Bismarck continues to be the Chancellor, counselling three successive emperors. However, the rising tensions and disagreements with Kaiser Wilhelm II ultimately leads to his resignation in 1890. The fourth chapter, Wilhelm’s Reich, serves as the second major segment of the book following Bismarck’s Reich. Hoyer portraits Wilhelm II as a young, ambitious, brave and visionary Emperor, unlike his grandfather’s, more modest and humbler demeanor. Due to his powerful character, Wilhelm II prefers Chancellors that he can easily control, and who can maintain a low profile in the politics. Under Wilhelm II’s leadership, he encourages further technological and industrial development, paving the way to German Empire to get a unique place in global trade with its specialization. While these developments increase the national wealth, but this was not reflected in people’s purchasing power. The working class becomes poorer, despite bankers, mostly Jews, becomes richer. The developing technology causes a decline in the need for workforce, exacerbating the challenges faced by a growing population. Developments in chemistry, resulted in new fertilizers, causes the food prices to decrease and leads the farmers into poverty, who eventually migrate to urban areas to seek jobs. Despite economic turmoil, Wilhelm II sought budget approval from the Reichstag to modernize the army. His ambitions to expand military power, however, intensified with the introduction of Weltpolitik, which was the imperialist foreign policy to make German Empire a world power. The book underlines that Wilhelm II saw Weltpolitik to bring all Germans’ together, including liberals, conservatives, social democrats, proving the power of iron in blood in German politics. Initially the writer expresses her hesitations about the character of Wilhelm II, questioning whether he was intelligent and proactive, or merely ignorant and easily influenced by a small circle of advisors. By the end of the fourth chapter, however, she clearly indicates how easily he was influenced by others, a vulnerability which ultimately leads him to take the decisions that brought his country into the First World War. In the fifth chapter, Catastrophe, Hojer summarizes the First World War and how Germany’s plans failed after the war began. Because of Weltpolitik, Great Britain, France and Russia allies against Germany, culminatinginto a war of attrition where both sides face with heavy loses. By the end of the war, Germany faced inevitable military defeat, widespread poverty among its population, with the British naval blockade worsening the situation. These aspects led to end of the war with armistice negotiations, which forced Kaiser Wilhelm II’s abdication and declaration of Germany as a republic.  In the final chapter, Hoyer concludes by highlighting the flawed foundations of the German nation, “blood and iron”, and how it destroyed borders, empire and military of Germany. But she also emphasizes Bismarck’s legacy and its enduring influence, and that it will survive with the rise of defensive nationalism after the defeat in the First World War. Hoyer summarizes the history of German Empire by touching upon education, literacy, education, religion, economy and socio-cultural changes of the time. She provides a clear picture of the nation-building process that lead to small German states into Germany we know today. Details she focused on, indeed, helps the reader to understand the German society, industry and economy today. Hoyer’s book can be seen as portraying Bismarck as the person who built the German nation -and national identity-, and Wilhelm II as the one who lead to the collapse of the Empire. While this seems a plausible approach initially, the details she provides explain the context of the time. It was the time when the collapse of Ottoman Empire has started, the European powers’ competition over its territory was already risking the Concert of Europe, and there was little chance for small German states to survive without a confederation. She also emphasizes how naturally these states stick to Germany even after the First World War. In other words, while she underlines the top-down nature of policies and transformation of German nation, she also gives hints about how inevitable this change was by focusing on the industrial and economic dynamics of the time.

Drăgan-George BASARABĂ

This study talks about the British-Danish relations in the context of heraldry and orders of chivalry, by analyzing the coats of arms of members of the House of Windsor found in the armorial of the Order of the Elephant, Denmark’s highest knightly order. Thus, it starts with a history of said chivalric order and its use as a diplomatic tool. Then, it briefly talks about the members of the British Royal Family who have been inducted into the Order of the Elephant, focusing on the armorial entries and stall plates of those who were or are part of the House of Windsor, the current ruling dynasty of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Prince George (future King George V), Prince Edward Albert of Wales (future King Edward VIII), Prince Albert, Duke of York (future King George VI), Prince George (future Duke of Kent), Prince Henry (future Duke of Gloucester), Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh (future Queen Elizabeth II), Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and, finally, Prince Charles of Wales (the current King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as Charles III). The presence of the heraldic achievements of the last five British monarchs in the Order’s armorial gives us a glimpse into the British-Danish diplomatic relations, as they became more and more cordial starting from the 19th century.

Ram Sagar

The Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), a premier autonomous research institute under the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India has a legacy of about seven decades with contributions made in the field of observational sciences namely atmospheric and astrophysics. The Survey of India used a location at ARIES, determined with an accuracy of better than 10 meters on a world datum through institute participation in a global network of Earth artificial satellites imaging during late 1950. Taking advantage of its high-altitude location, ARIES, for the first time, provided valuable input for climate change studies by long term characterization of physical and chemical properties of aerosols and trace gases in the central Himalayan regions. In astrophysical sciences, the institute has contributed precise and sometime unique observations of the celestial bodies leading to a number of discoveries. With the installation of the 3.6 meter Devasthal optical telescope in the year 2015, India became the only Asian country to join those few nations of the world who are hosting 4 meter class optical telescopes. This telescope, having advantage of geographical location, is well-suited for multi-wavelength observations and for sub-arc-second resolution imaging of the celestial objects including follow-up of the GMRT, AstroSat and gravitational-wave sources.

Frédéric Armao

Le terme « celtique » est décliné à l’envi dans tout un panel de productions culturelles modernes et contemporaines, notamment en Irlande, au point que le terme soit pratiquement devenu synonyme d’« irlandais » lorsque celui-ci est envisagé en opposition au « non-celte » – comprendre, en l’occurrence, l’Anglais. Le présent article s’interroge sur l’origine d’un tel recyclage identitaire et analyse deux exemples de productions culturelles issues de la scène irlandaise contemporaine : l’artiste Enya et le groupe de Celtic Metal Cruachan sont deux acteurs majeurs de leurs écosystèmes respectifs, que l’on qualifiera respectivement de « mainstream » et d’« underground ». Nous nous attarderons sur les caractéristiques opposant ou unissant ces deux formations musicales et nous interrogerons sur la place qu’elles occupent sur la scène artistique irlandaise mais aussi, plus largement, dans la culture et l’histoire récente du pays.

حسن أحمد ابراهيم المعموري Hassan Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Mamouri, قاسم كريم علي الجنابي Qasim Karim Ali Al-Janabi

The history of Britain received great attention from Western researchers in Europe and America, so they wrote hundreds of thousands of books on this important region of the world, and these studies extended from the beginning of the establishment of the political system there, through the Middle Ages, then modern and then contemporary. These studies and literature became among the most important sources that researchers rely on for their studies. Arab researchers and historians also wrote studies of no less value than those studies on the history of Europe in general and the history of Britain in particular. These studies dealt with the history of the region in all aspects, whether political, intellectual or economic. Researchers have made great efforts represented in translation in order to uncover this eventful history throughout the ages. Perhaps among the most important Arab studies on the history of Britain are contemporary studies that dealt with important political aspects in it, and those studies focused on the most important political and economic institutions in it, as well as studying important personalities, especially those who played an important role in the political life of Britain. The period during which Major was appointed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is one of the most important periods that led to the refinement of his political personality and brought him close to international events, which qualified him to take important positions and was an important reason for resolving many outstanding issues, on top of which is the Irish problem. And he has adopted from the beginning of his premiership that education was one of his top priorities. A number of sympathetic commentators have suggested that Major's gifted concept of education in Britain derives in large part from his "own experience of leaving school without qualifications and finding himself on the wrong side of education paths." The term of Major is considered one of the most important years, especially with regard to the issue of local government and its laws, which he reformulated with the help of his advisors and which later caused him a political crisis by his opponents.

Elodie Gallet

The BBC played an active role in military conflicts, from the Second World War to the Falklands War and the war in Iraq. Nevertheless, coverage of the conflict in Northern Ireland poses particular difficulties, in that the conflict played out on British territory and was fought not just by the army but also by civilians.This article sketches out a panorama of BBC coverage of Northern Ireland, from the resurgence of violent conflict in the late 1960, through to 1995. With a few exceptions, the BBC followed government policy on the question by putting forward a partial and biassed view of the conflict.

Nicolas Sigoillot

The UK 2019 general election was ultimately the one which brought Jeremy Corbyn’s downfall and a shift back from the radical to the soft left in the political line of the Labour Party. This election presents a singular character for one of the two oldest Trotskyist parties in the United-Kingdom: the Socialist Party. Indeed, the Trotskyist party, heir to the Militant Tendency of the 1980s, decided not to stand any candidates at this election and to officially support Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign. This paper will retrace the history linking the Socialist Party to the Labour Party. It will also explore the modalities of the Socialist Party’s support for the Labour Party in both its material and ideological aspects. From this, it will show how this campaign was ultimately more a campaign to serve revolutionary objectives, than a genuine campaign for the victory of the party led by Jeremy Corbyn. This paper will then proceed to examine the comparison often drawn by the media and the political opponents of Jeremy Corbyn between the elections of 1983 and 2019 by examining the role played by the Trotskyists then and Momentum now, the reasons of their support to Labour an the results obtained by each.

Dieter BRANDES

The old historical wounds of Europe are century-old wounds like the “Northern Ireland conflict”, the Russia–Finland conflict, the Poland–Germany–Russia conflict, the long-lasting conflict between Ottomans, Hungary, and later, the Habsburg and the Russian Empire, but also the thousand-year-old religious borderline between Eastern and Western culture. Moreover, the first half of the 20th century in (the Christian) Europe is characterized by wars and genocide in a terrible, hitherto unknown dimension. About 10 million people died in World War I and about 50 million in World War II. Countries all over Europe like Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine were involved in these war-related events. Many unhealed mental wounds are still deeply rooted in the hearts of individuals and peoples. Unhealed wounds also remained concerning the genocides of the 20th century, like the Armenian genocide, the Holodomor in Ukraine, the Holocaust against Jews and Gypsies, the genocide against Tatars in the Crimean region. Finally, let us remember the million fold wounds that arose from the communist dictatorships. After World War II, we have to mention the wounds inflicted by many additional European conflicts like the ones between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Georgia and Russia, Ukraine and Russia, the Bosnia–Croatia–Serbia conflict regarding the dissolution of the old state of Yugoslavia, the conflict between Greeks and Turks regarding Northern Cyprus, the Moldova–Russia conflict regarding Transdniestria etc. “The need for healing and reconciliation in our broken world cannot be overemphasized. The pain and burden of memories of ongoing, recent and past conflicts haunt and hamper normal life and progress. The process for ‘Healing of Memories’ is designed to advocate for, develop and promote healing of memories and other healing and reconciliation processes in Churches and faith communities, so as to strengthen their role as channels of hope, healing and reconciliation in our world today.” This was part of the final message of the WCC “European Ecumenical and Interreligious Consultation on ´Healing of Memories’ on 4th-6th May 2010”, in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the one hand, the Bible leads us to peace and reconciliation, like in Prov 16:7 in the Old Testament: “When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him”, or in the new Testament, when in Cor 5:18, Paul says “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”  Moreover, the European Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican, and Catholic churches avowed in the Final Document of the Second European Ecumenical Assembly in Graz 1997: “The church communities must confess that throughout history they often showed themselves as a bad example for the Christian message of reconciliation and ´religions and churches became themselves part of the problem´.” Therefore, the European churches signed in their common Charta Oecumenica in chapter 3: “In the spirit of the Gospel, we must reappraise together the history of the Christian churches, which has been marked by many beneficial experiences, but also by schisms, hostilities and even armed conflicts.” There have been several church initiatives of reconciliation in Europe, like the Stuttgart Church Confession of Guilt, the reconciliation process between the Polish Ecumenical Council and the Evangelical Church in Germany, the Czechian and German church reconciliation process, the reconciliation process between the Church of Norway and the Sámi, the reconciliation process in Northern Ireland, the process called „Reconciliation in Europe between the Churches in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Germany”, the Anglican–Orthodox Dialog, the Porvoo process between the Anglican and the Lutheran Churches, the Pro Oriente reconciliation process regarding the schism of the “Unions of Brest and Transylvania”. The “Healing of Memories” (HoM) process – originally developed in South Africa as a counselling methodology for the healing of personal emotional wounds after the apartheid – was further developed in South Eastern Europe on behalf of CPCE, CEC, and WCC into a process between cultures and religions. Healing of Memories between cultures and religions is a methodology to help overcome frozen history and “hi-stories” by putting emphasis on voices that were not heard, ignored or not acknowledged so far. According to its methodology, HoM is a “process of the generations” that implicates the three steps of “walking together through history”, “sharing the pain of others”, and “preparing the future together”. The HoM process between cultures and religions adds to the above “three historical steps” the previous step: “Interdisciplinary researching of the history of the nations, cultures and religions and/or communities.” For these HoM processes, special training courses have been developed in Romania in order to train facilitators, which have been recognised and adopted in the meantime as master courses at the universities of Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár, Alba Iulia/Gyulafehérvár, and Sibiu/Nagyszeben.

Murray Gell-Mann, James Hartle

We continue our efforts to understand, within the framework of the quantum mechanics of the universe as a whole, the quasiclassical realm of familiar experience as a feature emergent from the Hamiltonian of the elementary particles and the initial condition of the universe. Quantum mechanics assigns probabilities to exhaustive sets of alternative decoherent histories of the universe. We introduce and define the notion of strong decoherence. We replace the notion of maximal sets of alternative decohering histories by defining the more useful concept of "full" sets of alternative strongly decohering histories. These full sets fall into equivalence classes each of which is characterized by a basis in Hilbert space. Finally we describe our continuing efforts to find measures of classicality --- measures that could be applied to such full sets of alternative strongly decohering so as to characterize a quasiclassical realm.

Luc Bouvard, Christine Reynier

Ryan Twomey

Maria Edgeworth is well known for her didactic tales and her production of regionally accurate narratives. Much less is known, however, about her juvenilia and the influence this writing had on her adult work. In the following article, I examine numerous words identifiable in Maria Edgeworth’s juvenilia drama, The Double Disguise (1786), which antedate the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) quotations attributed to her adult work. Through examining the similarities in word choices and vocabulary between The Double Disguise and her later work, this article argues for the importance of juvenilia on the development of Edgeworth’s adult authorship.

Elisabeth Delattre

This article deals with the way Ciaran Carson has managed to translate, or rather “mutate”, some of Arthur Rimbaud’s prose poems Illuminations into an entirely different work, a verse collection in alexandrines, while keeping close to the original spirit. This article will follow three movements, first the form and structure, then the matter of translation proper, and finally the overall tone of the collection which relies on the music of the language itself.

Haiming Tang, Angela Wilkins

Gene duplication is a major mechanism through which new genetic material is generated. Although numerous methods have been developed to differentiate the ortholog and paralogs, very few differentiate the "Parent-Daughter" relationship among paralogous pairs. As coined by the Mira et al, we refer the "Parent" copy as the paralogous copy that stays at the original genomic position of the "original copy" before the duplication event, while the "Daughter" copy occupies a new genomic locus. Here we present a novel method which combines the phylogenetic reconstruction of duplications at different evolutionary periods and the synteny evidence collected from the preserved homologous gene orders. We reconstructed for the first time a deep evolutionary history of "Parent-Daughter" relationships among genes that were descendants from 2 rounds of whole genome duplications (2R WGDs) at early vertebrates and were further duplicated in later ceancestors like early Mammalia and early Primates. Our analysis reveals that the "Parent" copy has significantly fewer accumulated mutations compared with the "Daughter" copy since their divergence after the duplication event. More strikingly, we found that the "Parent" copy in a duplication event continues to be the "Parent" of the younger successive duplication events which lead to "grand-daughters".

Joshua Abah Abah

The amount of information available to the mathematics teacher is so enormous that the selection of desirable content is gradually becoming a huge task in itself. With respect to the inclusion of elements of history of mathematics in mathematics instruction, the era of Big Data introduces a high likelihood of Recency Bias, a hitherto unconnected challenge for stakeholders in mathematics education. This tendency to choose recent information at the expense of relevant older, composite, historical facts stands to defeat the aims and objectives of the epistemological and cultural approach to mathematics instructional delivery. This study is a didactic discourse with focus on this threat to the history and pedagogy of mathematics, particularly as it affects mathematics education in Nigeria. The implications for mathematics curriculum developers, teacher-training programmes, teacher lesson preparation, and publication of mathematics instructional materials were also deeply considered.

Helge Kragh

The present discussion concerning certain fundamental physical theories (such as string theory and multiverse cosmology) has reopened the demarcation problem between science and non-science. While parts of the physics community see the situation as a beginning epistemic shift in what defines science, others deny that the traditional criterion of empirical testability can or should be changed. As demonstrated by the history of physics, it is not the first time that drastic revisions of theory assessment have been proposed. Although historical reflection has little to offer modern physicists in a technical sense, it does offer a broader and more nuanced perspective on the present debate. This paper suggests that history of science is of some indirect value to modern physicists and philosophers dealing with string theory, multiverse scenarios, and related theoretical ideas.