Wipert von Blücher und Finnland : Alternativpolitik und Diplomatie im 'Dritten Reich'

This dissertation explores the role of the German minister to Helsinki, Wipert von Blücher (1883-1963), within the German-Finnish relations of the late 1930s and the Second World War. Blücher was a key figure – and certainly one of the constants – within German Finland policy and the complex international diplomacy surrounding Finland. Despite representing Hitler’s Germany, he was not a National Socialist in the narrower sense of the term, but a conservative civil servant in the Wilhelmine tradition of the German foreign service. Along with a significant number of career diplomats, Blücher attempted to restrict National Socialist influence on the exercise of German foreign policy, whilst successfully negotiating a modus vivendi with the new regime. The study of his political biography in the Third Reich hence provides a highly representative example of how the traditional élites of Germany were caught in an cycle of conformity and, albeit tacit, opposition. Above all, however, the biographical study of Blücher and his behaviour offers an hitherto unexplored approach to the history of the German-Finnish relations. His unusually long tenure in Helsinki covered the period leading up to the so-called Winter War, which left Blücher severely distraught by Berlin’s effectively pro-Soviet neutrality and brought him close to resigning his post. It further extended to the German-Finnish rapprochement of 1940/41 and the military cooperation of both countries from mid-1941 to 1944. Throughout, Blücher developed a diverse and ambitious set of policy schemes, largely rooted in the tradition of Wilhelmine foreign policy. In their moderation and commonsensical realism, his designs – indeed his entire conception of foreign policy – clashed with the foreign political and ideological premises of the National Socialist regime. In its theoretical grounding, the analysis of Blücher’s political schemes is built on the concept of alternative policy and indebted to A.J.P. Taylor’s definition of dissent in foreign policy. It furthermore rests upon the assumption, introduced by Wolfgang Michalka, that National Socialist foreign policy was dominated by a plurality of rival conceptions, players, and institutions competing for Hitler’s favour (‘Konzeptionen-Pluralismus’). Although primarily a study in the history of international relations, my research has substantially benefited from more recent developments within cultural history, particularly research on nobility and élites, and the renewed focus on autobiography and conceptions of the self. On an abstract level, the thesis touches upon some of the basic components of German politics, political culture, and foreign policy in the first half of the 20th century: national belonging and conflicting loyalties, self-perception and representation, élites and their management of power, the modern history of German conservatism, the nature and practice of diplomacy, and, finally, the intricate relationship between the ethics of the professional civil service and absolute moral principles. Against this backdrop, the examination of Blücher’s role both within Finnish politics and the foreign policy of the Third Reich highlights the biographical dimension of the German-Finnish relationships, while fathoming the determinants of individual human agency in the process.

War and Revolution in St. Petersburg : Modernist Links in the Poetry of Edith Södergran and Anna Andreevna Akhmatova

Important modernists in their own countries, Anna Akhmatova and Edith Södergran are compared in this dissertation as poets whose poetry reflects the climactic events of the early twentieth century in Finland and Russia. A comparatist, biographical and historical approach is used to uncover the circumstances surrounding these events. First the poets’ early works are reviewed and their contemporaries are mentioned to provide a poetic context. Then a brief review of Finnish and Russian history situates them historically. Next, the rich literary diversity of St. Petersburg’s Silver Age is presented and the work of the poets is viewed in context before their poetry is compared, as the First World War, October Revolution and subsequent Finnish Civil War impact their writing. While biography is not the primary focus, it becomes important as inevitably the writers’ lives are changed by cataclysmic events and the textual analysis of the poems in Swedish, Russian and English shows the impact of war on their poetry. These two poets have not been compared before in a critical review in English and this work contributes to needed work in English. They share certain common modernist traits: attention to the word, an intimate, unconventional voice, and a concern with audience. In addition, they both reject formal traditions while they adopt new forms and use modern, outside influences such as art, architecture and philosophy as subject matter and a lens through which to focus their poetry. While it may seem that Anna Akhmatova was the most socially aware poet, because of the censorship she endured under Stalin, my research has revealed that actually Edith Södergran showed the most social consciousness. Thus, a contrast of the poets’ themes reveals these differences in their approaches. Both poets articulated a vibrant response to war and revolution becoming modernists in the process. In their final works created in the years before their deaths, they reveal the solace they found in nature as well as final mentions of the violent events of their youth. Keywords: St. Petersburg, Modernism, Symbolism, Acmeism, Silver Age, Finland-Swedish literature

Herrana metsässä : Kansatieteellinen tutkimus metsänhoitajuudesta

The aim of the research is to interpret the professional culture of Finnish university-educated foresters in historical perspective. The main material of this research consists of biographical interviews, altogether 226 life stories of Finnish foresters, as well as foresters private photograph collections and articles in forest students' magazines. This study is the first published Ph. D. dissertation of a large oral history project "Forestry Professions in a Changing Society" 1999 2002 collected by The Finnish Forest History Society, the University of Helsinki (Ethnology) and The Finnish Forest Museum Lusto. The forester education was organized in the Evo Forest Institute 1862 1908, at the University of Helsinki since 1908 and additionally at the University of Joensuu since 1982. At first all the vacancies were in the service of the Board of Forestry, but during the 20th century the working opportunities of foresters significantly expanded, even outside the traditional areas of forestry or abroad. At the same time the whole area of Finnish forestry had integrated more versatile values concerning the forests and their use. The male-dominated profession gained its first female members already in the 1920s, and the number of female students rose gradually from the 1970s onwards. In the 1990s almost half of the new forest students were women. The content of both work and education of Finnish forest professionals has faced huge changes during the 19th and 20th centuries. Despite this however, there has been a long-term vision of a firm profession based on joint experiences, shared memories and the common task of foresters in the Finnish forestry. The feeling of togetherness the forester spirit which was created in a tight-knit student group which kept in touch also later as professionals was needed to make the work possible. Through foresters' own attitudes and narratives of themselves, the study is focused on forest professionalism as a cultural process of successive generations of foresters. How have foresters socialized themselves into their profession? How has forest professionalism been maintained? What is the meaning of joint experiences and shared memories in the profession? By studying the manifestations of a culture it is possible to interpret the culture itself. There seems to be an astounding consensus of opinion concerning forest professionalism in the oral, visual and written stories of foresters. Even if all the individuals and some separate groups, such as female foresters and the younger generation of foresters, did not always share the same experiences, the vision of forest professionalism was collectively recognized and often even approved. The shared idea of "a real forest professionalism" is like a model narrative, a point of comparison, which is needed while looking for one s own professional identity.

Certainty or Faith? Arendt's and Merleau-Ponty's Critique of Cartesian Foundationalism

Epistemological foundationalism has for centuries attempted to unify all scientific inquiry into the context of one grand science, the first philosophy. One of the most important tasks of this tradition has been to ground all knowledge on absolutely certain foundations. In this master s thesis I ask the following question: To what extent and under what conditions is it possible to achieve absolute certainty in the sense of the attempts of Cartesian foundationalism? By examining how the 20th century philosophers, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) interpret the epistemological methodology of René Descartes, I claim that the Cartesian achievement of absolute certainty rests on the implicit presupposition of an epistemologically prior form of faith in the world and trust (pistis) in other conscious beings. I show that knowledge is possible only within the context of a common world that is inhabited by several conscious beings that share a common linguistic system. This threefold element is shown to be the bedrock condition for any kind of philosophical inquiry. The main literature sources for this thesis are The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt, Le Visible et l invisible by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Meditationes de Prima Philosophiae by René Descartes and Erfahrung und Urteil by Edmund Husserl.

Kuvan ja tekstin välissä : Kuvateksti uutiskuvan ja lehtijutun elementtinä

The study focuses on picture captions: their grammar and interplay with photographs and their position as semi-independent elements of the news stories. The research was conducted in the framework of critical discourse analysis, social semiotic visual theory and fennistic syntactical research. The data consist of 441 press photographs, 1,815 captions and a number of news items from Finnish dailies. The generic structure potential of the caption includes the caption headline, the caption proper, i.e. the verbalization of the picture content, and the frame. In the data, 41 per cent of the captions have a headline, and 44 per cent contain a caption proper. Characteristic of the caption proper is omission of the finite verb and the use of the present tense, both of which have decreased in Finnish papers during the 20th century. The caption proper is typically a main clause, and both subordinate clauses and participal phrases occur mostly in the frame. While comparing caption variants attached to the same pictures, the processes and their participants proved to be identified considerably identically, following the news agency captions. Instead, the reader?s interpretations of a picture could be directed by framing it in different ways. For example, the caption may focus on the only person depicted, deal with a whole group, or give an abstract account of the situation. The caption is a paratext, a typographically marked, semi-independent element of a news story. Between the headline and the caption, four semantic relations have been identified. The caption may be a paraphrase of the headline, or a close-up illustrating an abstract headline with a concrete example. If the name of the person depicted is their only common factor, the relation between the caption and the headline is additive. A specifying caption will give more details than the headline. The caption may complete, repeat, or summarize the body copy. Naturally, most captions completing the story verbalize the content of the picture. As the caption is often based on the story, it may even repeat the body copy verbatim. The summarizing function is probably becoming increasingly important, as most Finnish newspapers have abandoned the use of a separate standfirst.

Post-industrial Intervention : An Activity-Theoretical Expedition Tracing the Proximal Development of Forms of Conducting Interventions

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Kouluromaanien opettajakuva 1930-luvulta 1990-luvulle : ihanteellisia, kapinallisia ja oman tien kulkijoita

The aim of this research is to define what kind of characters and images of teachers appear in Finnish school novels describing social changes and educational political reform from the 1930s to the 1990s written by teachers, particularly grammar school teachers. As comparison material, I use school novels written by Swedish school teachers, in which the changes in Swedish society and educational system and their expressions in the characters of teachers of the school novels are studied. The main focus of my study is centred particularly on school novels in which the images of grammar school teachers are described during times of school reform. From these starting points, the main objectives of the study are novels written by Finnish school teachers Anneli Toijala and Sampo Haahtela and Swedish school teacher Hugo Swensson, who was inspired by Haahtela. The research is qualitative multidisciplinary case analysis. The research method is content analysis, and the approach is hermeneutic. The research is divided into eight main chapters. After the introduction I introduce the essential concepts of my research. In the third main chapter I define the research function. In that context, besides the research objectives, I introduce former research on character description in literature, I define the methodological solutions with grounds and present the research material. Both literary research methods and sociological terminology are applied in the research alongside with pedagogical research. The research results show that images of teachers are diverse. At one end of the spectrum these represent immature pictures of teachers withdrawn into the routines of everyday life; at the other, they advance and reflect the reformist teacher. This becomes clearly evident when comparing the teacher "monsters" of the classic authors to the educational optimists at the end of the 20th century. The results show that the images of teachers in school novels are almost without exception coherent, psychologically credible and consistent, and hardly any different from the images of teachers in the Swedish school novels used as comparison material. On the contrary, plenty of similarities are found. The comprehensive school reform, educational political discourse and teachers' feelings are realistically clarified in the school novels that describe the period. Keywords: literature image, school reform, school novel, teacher image, reflection, internal co-operation in school

Kuluttajuuden rakentuminen nuorten kertomuksissa

This study examines the narrative construction of consumerism in Finnish consumer culture in the early 21st century. The objects of the study are consumer life stories and essays on environmentally friendly consumption, written by 15-19-year-old high school students. Moreover, group discussions were used as additional research material. The data was gathered at five high schools in different areas of Finland. Young people's consumer narratives are interpreted through cultural stories and consumer ethos such as self-control, gratification and green consumerism. The narrative research approach is used to analyse what types of consumer positions these young people construct in stories on their own consumer history, and what kinds of ideas and thought patterns they construct on green consumerism. The study creates a multifaceted image of young people as agents in consumer society. They construct archetypical stories of wastrels and scrooges, as well as prudent and environmentally friendly consumers. Consumption and expenditure are however mostly a continuous battle between self-control and giving in to gratification. This reality is illustrated among other things by clever expressions invented by young people, such as Carefree Pennywise, Prudent Hedonist and Wasteful Scrooge. In their narratives, young people also analyse the usefulness - or uselessness - of their decisions on consumption, as well as develop themselves into controlling and sensible consumers. This kind of virtuous consumer allows him/herself the joy and the gratification of consumption, as long as these are "kept in check". One's view of expenditure and consumption is not permanent. Consumerism may alter with time. A wastrel may grow up to be a young person in control of their desires, or a thrifty child may awaken to the pleasures of consumption in their teens. Consumerism may also be polyphonic: it may simultaneously - and even uncomplicatedly - be constructed upon the discourses of wastefulness, prudence, gratification and green consumerism. Young people allow for gratification to form a part of green consumerism, too: it is not simply restrictive self-denial. They also see many hurdles in the way of green consumerism, such as the elevated price of ecological products, and the difficulties of green consumer practices. The stories also show the gender division in green consumerism. For young men, ecological considerations offer elements for the construction of consumerism only on the very rare occasion, whereas striving for day-to-day green practices is typical for young women.

Ecological processes and large-scale climate relationships in northern coniferous forests

Ilmasto vaikuttaa ekologisiin prosesseihin eri tasoilla. Suuren mittakaavan ilmastoprosessit, yhdessä ilmakehän ja valtamerien kanssa, säätelevät paikallisia sääilmiöitä suurilla alueilla (mantereista pallopuoliskoihin). Tämä väistöskirja pyrkii selittämään kuinka suuren mittakaavan ilmasto on vaikuttanut tiettyihin ekologisiin prosesseihin pohjoisella havumetsäalueella. Valitut prosessit olivat puiden vuosilustojen kasvu, metsäpalojen esiintyminen ja vuoristomäntykovakuoriaisen aiheuttamat puukuolemat. Suuren mittakaavan ilmaston löydettiin vaikuttaneen näiden prosessien esiintymistiheyteen, kestoon ja levinneisyyteen keskeisten sään muuttujien välityksellä hyvin laajoilla alueilla. Tutkituilla prosesseilla oli vahva yhteys laajan mittakaavan ilmastoon. Yhteys on kuitenkin ollut hyvin dynaaminen ja muuttunut 1900-luvulla ilmastonmuutoksen aiheuttaessa muutoksia suuren mittakaavan ja alueellisten ilmastoprosessien välisiin sisäisiin suhteisiin.

Beatific Enjoyment in Scholastic Philosophy and Theology: 1240-1335

This dissertation examines the concept of beatific enjoyment (fruitio beatifica) in scholastic theology and philosophy in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century. The aim of the study is to explain what is enjoyment and to show why scholastic thinkers were interested in discussing it. The dissertation consists of five chapters. The first chapter deals with Aurelius Augustine's distinction between enjoyment and use and the place of enjoyment in the framework of Augustine's view of the passions and the human will. The first chapter also focuses upon the importance of Peter Lombard's Sentences for the transmission of Augustine's treatment of enjoyment in scholastic thought as well as upon Lombard's understanding of enjoyment. The second chapter treats thirteenth-century conceptions of the object and psychology of enjoyment. Material for this chapter is provided by the writings - mostly Sentences commentaries - of Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Peter of Tarentaise, Robert Kilwardby, William de la Mare, Giles of Rome, and Richard of Middleton. The third chapter inspects early fourteenth-century views of the object and psychology of enjoyment. The fourth chapter focuses upon discussions of the enjoyment of the Holy Trinity. The fifth chapter discusses the contingency of beatific enjoyment. The main writers studied in the third, fourth and fifth chapters are John Duns Scotus, Peter Aureoli, Durandus of Saint Pourçain, William of Ockham, Walter Chatton, Robert Holcot, and Adam Wodeham. Historians of medieval intellectual history have emphasized the significance of the concept of beatific enjoyment for understanding the character and aims of scholastic theology and philosophy. The concept of beatific enjoyment was developed by Augustine on the basis of the insight that only God can satisfy our heart's desire. The possibility of satisfying this desire requires a right ordering of the human mind and a detachment of the will from the relative goals of earthly existence. Augustine placed this insight at the very foundation of the notion of Christian learning and education in his treatise On Christian Doctrine. Following Augustine, the twelfth-century scholastic theologian Peter Lombard made the concept of enjoyment the first topic in his plan of systematic theology. The official inclusion of Lombard's Sentences in the curriculum of theological studies in the early universities stimulated vigorous discussions of enjoyment. Enjoyment was understood as a volition and was analyzed in relation to cognition and other psychic features such as rest and pleasure. This study shows that early fourteenth-century authors deepened the analysis of enjoyment by concentrating upon the relationship between enjoyment and mental pleasure, the relationship between cognition and volition, and the relationship between the will and the beatific object (i.e., the Holy Trinity). The study also demonstrates the way in which the idea of enjoyment was affected by changes in the method of theological analysis - the application of Aristotelian logic in a Trinitarian context and the shift from virtue ethics to normative ethics.

Hautamuistomerkki elämän ja kuoleman tulkitsijana : Heikki Häiväojan, Kain Tapperin ja Matti Peltokankaan tekemät hautamuistomerkit 1952-2002

Grave sculpture as interpreter of life and death. Grave sculptures done by Heikki Häiväoja, Kain Tapper and Matti Peltokangas 1952-2002. The thoughts of Philippe Ariès and Erwin Panofsky on western funeral art constitute the starting point of this study. These scholars speak about the 20th century as a period of decline regarding western funeral art. The reason for this situation lies, according to them, in the fact that death has been rejected and become a private affair in modern society. Especially Panofsky sees an important reason for the decay of funeral art also in the separation of death from religion. In this study, I approach the view of Ariès and Panofsky from the angle of Finnish funeral art. The subject of the study is grave sculptures of three Finnish sculptors: Heikki Häiväoja, Kain Tapper and Matti Peltokangas, from 1952 to 2002. (The analysis of the grave sculptures has been performed with the Iconology of Erwin Panofsky. The analysis has been deepened by the ideas of a graveyard as a semiotic text according to Werner Enninger and Christa Schwens. In order to confirm their argumentation, they analyse the graveyard text with the model of communicative functions of Roman Jakobson and verify that the graveyard is a cultural text according to Juri Lotman.) Results of the study In the grave sculptures of the sculptors, different worldviews appear alongside Christian thoughts indicating a new stage in the tradition of funeral art. In the grave sculptures characterised as Christian, the view of life after death is included. In these memorials the direction of life is prospective, pointing to the life beyond. Death is a border, beyond which one is unable to see. Nevertheless the border is open or marked by the cross. On this open border, death is absence of pain, glory and new unity. In memorials with different worldviews, the life beyond is a possibility which is not excluded. Memorials interpret life retrospectively; life is a precious memory which wakens grief and longing. Many memorials have metaphysical and mystic features. In spite of democratization the order and valuation of social classes appear in some memorials. The old order also materializes in the war memorials relating the same destiny of the deceased. Different burial places, nevertheless, do not indicate social inequality but are rather signs of diversity. The sculptors' abstract means of modern funeral art deepen the handling of the subject matter of death and reveal the mystery of it. Grave sculptures are a part of Finnish and sacral modern art, and there is an interaction between funeral art and modern art. Modern art acquires a new dimension, when grave sculptures become a part of its field. Grave sculptures offer an alternative to anonymous burying. The memorial is a sign of the end of life; it gives death significance and publicity and creates a relation to the past of the society. In this way, grave sculptures are a part of the chain of memory of the western funeral art, which extends throughout Antiquity until ancient Egypt. (In this study I have spoken of funeral art as a chain of memory using the thoughts of Danièle Hervieu-Léger.) There are no signs of decay in the grave sculptures, on the contrary the tradition of funeral art continues in them as a search for the meaning of life and death and as an intuitive interpretation of death. As such, grave sculptures are part of the Finnish discussion of death.

Kirkko sydämessä : Uskonnon muokkautuminen ja individuaatio inkerinsuomalaisten elämänvaiheissa 1900-luvulla

The Church in one s heart. The formation of religion and individuation in the lives of Ingrian Finns in the 20th century. Sinikka Haapaniemi University of Helsinki, Finland 302 pages The study falls within the sphere of religious views and the problematique of the life trajectory. The target group comprises those Finnish speakers (Ingrian Finns, Ingrians) living in what was historically Ingermanland and who in varying circumstances became scattered. These times were characterized by pressures for change due to societal reasons and reasons of war. In conditions of change external living conditions matters of religious conviction may assume new meaning and form. The examination focuses on sustaining personal faith in difficult life situations and on how crises affected religious views. Another level of scrutiny takes shape through the terminology of the analytic psychology of C.G. Jung. Individuation is deemed to occur as a cumulative process through the stages of life. The basic data for the study comprises interviews with twenty (20) natives of Ingria and their biographical narratives written in standard language. Many biographical accounts and memoirs serve as secondary data. The interviewees, who were largely selected at random, recounted their lives without questions formulated in advance. The study falls within the field of comparative religion and adheres to the principles of qualitative research practice and the case-study method. Effort was made to get to know each interviewee in the situation which his/her narrative presents. The aim is to pay attention to the interpretations given by the narrators of their various experiences and to understand their meanings on a personal level. The years during which the Ingrians were scattered, wandering and returning raise problems of survival. An individual s own initiative assumes individual forms and emphases. Religion was part of the narrators lives as one factor in the quality of life. Their religious thinking was influenced by both their home upbringing and the teaching of the Church. The interviewees took a serious attitude to the informative teaching of confirmation training. When there was no longer a church, it was claimed that the church travelled with them. Changed circumstances tested the validity of the teachings. The message of the Church institution persisted and helped them to preserve their traditions. A striving for unity and for the presence of a community emerged both in the form of ritual behaviour and in a predilection to sociability. Gradually, as they returned, the activity of the Church of Ingria began to revive. At the turn of the millennium the network of parishes was extensive and cultural activity flourished wherever the Ingrians settled in the postwar decades. Religion is part of the process of individuation. Examination of religion and individuation shows that religion remained an individual view, whose factual base was formed by Christianity and the tradition of the Church. Home upbringing served to orientate, but not to bind. With ageing the importance of independent thought is emphasized, for example in relation to confession, it did not pose a threat to individuality. Keywords: Life story, Religiosity, individuation, Ingrian, the Church of Ingria

Viimeinen matka : Toimintatutkimus kirkollisen hautauskentän professiostruktuurista

This study is a qualitative examination of the professional structure of the ecclesias-tical funeral field. The research material is based on 13 funeral cases in the archdio-cese. The researcher participated in all the funerals and memorial events, interviewed the closest survivors, the officials of the funeral agency and the ecclesiastical actors. The material was collected by means of observation and recording of the interviews, and was later transcribed and analyzed. The actors in this study are the survivors, the funeral agencies and the church. The survivors act as the buyers and users of the products (funeral services) who require both the funeral agencies and the church to assist them with the problems that the death has caused. The numbers of actions related to the death and to the funerals - the rituals of death - are placed on the action field, which in this study is called the funeral field. In this field, the researchquestion focused space and power, and the actions on the funeral field are highly ritualized. The theoretical model comes from Pierre Bourdieu. The study showed an action structure on the funeral field in which the survivors first contacted a funeral agency, which then contacted the other actors of the field, re-served the date and place for the funeral, and organised the funeral arrangements. The funeral agencies arranged an opportunity for the survivors to have a last look at the deceased when he or she was placed in the coffin, and they held a moment of the prayer (if desired) before removing the deceased from the hospital's chapel. The sur-vivors contacted the pastor of the funeral much later. The pastor also participated in the memorial event. The survivors contacted the church musician through via pastor. In some cases, the survivors had neither met nor even seen the musician prior to the actual funeral service. Still, the music was of great importance to the survivors. In the research interviews, tensions emerged to some extent between the funeral agencies and the ecclesiastical actors; these actors attempted to resolve these tensions through organising negotiations. In the beginning of the 20th century, the family took an active part in the preparations of the deceased and in the arrangements of the funerals, whereas this study showed that these days, survivors often transfer the preparations to the funeral agencies. The professional side of the funeral field has grown. The funeral agencies can be seen as providers of full services that act on the survivors' behalf, aspiring to high individu-ality and aiming to fulfil the survivors' wishes. In practise, the role of the church in carrying out the last journey was reduced in the research cases to the actual funeral. In several cases, the pastor or the cantor of the funeral had never before seen the per-son in the coffin at any stage of life or death. The proportion of cremations in funeral cases has increased rapidly, however, special issues related to these cremations (such as the possibility of holding a funeral service for the already cremated deceased) have seen little consideration in the church. In the church's liturgies on funeral rites, cremation is frequently overlooked. The pastors or the cantors did not participate in either the burial of the funeral urn or in the scattering of the deceased's ashes. The verger took care of it. The parishes had no adopted standard practices for cremations, yet in each case for the survivors that moment was crucial.

Kertooko luonnon järjestys suunnittelusta? : Michael Behe älykkään suunnittelun ajatuksen puolustajana

This study presents a systematical analysis of biochemist Michael Behe's thinking. Behe is a prominent defender of the Intelligent Design Movement which has gaines influence particularly in the United States, but also in elsewhere. At the core of his thinking is the idea of intelligent design, according to which the order of the cosmos and of living things is the handiwork of a non-human intelligence. This "design argument" had previously been popular in the tradition of natural theology. Behe attempts to base his argument on the findings of 20th century biology, however. It has been revealed by biochemistry that cells, formerly thought to be simple, in fact contain complex structures, for instance the bacterial flagellum, which are reminiscent of the machines built by humans. According to Behe these can be believably explained only by referring to intelligent design, not by invoking darwinian natural laws. My analysis aims to understand Behe's thought on intelligent design, to bring forward its connections to intellectual history and worldviews, and to study whether Behe has formulated his argument so as to avoid common criticisms directed against design arguments. I use a large amount literature and refer to diverse writers participating in the intelligent design debate. The results of the analysis are as follows. Behe manages to avoid a large amount of classical criticisms against the design argument, and new criticisms have to be developed to meet his argument. Secondly, positions on intelligent design appear to be linked to larger philosophical and religious worldviews.vaan myös maailmankuvat ja uskonnolliset näkemykset.

Venäjän politiikka ja perustuslaki : Tutkimus Venäjän perustuslakikäsitteistön kehityksestä 1900-luvulla

Constitutional politics in Russia, a conceptual history study of the constitutional rhetoric in the 20th century In April 2006 the Russian Constitution had its 100th anniversary. Following its late start, five constitutions have been adopted. The great number of constitutions is partly explained in my work by the fact that Russia s political system has changed many times, from one state system to another. From a monarchical state power, it changed first, with the October revolution, into the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, and after that, in 1924, into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In 1991, the Russian Federation was established. The great number of constitutions can also be explained by the fact that in a one-party system, constitutional concepts became one of the most important instruments for introducing political programmes. When the political unity of the state was not only restricted by the Constitution, but also by the party ideology, the political debates concerning constitutional concepts were the key discussions for all the reformative pursuits of Soviet politics. It can be said that, in the Soviet Union, almost all political discourses dealt with constitutional concepts. In the context of restricted unity, the constitutional concepts were the most important tools to argue and create a basis for a new presentation and new political programmes. Thus, the basic feature of the Soviet political discourses has been a continuous competition regarding the constitutional concepts. By defining the constitutional concepts, a new, the political elites wanted especially to redefine, their own way, the traditional meanings of the October 1917 Revolution, and to differentiate them from those of the preceding period of power. From a methodological point of view, I argue that the Russian constitutional concepts make a conceptual historical approach very suitable, and change the focus on history. This approach studies history in contemporary contexts which follow after each other, and whose texts are the main research target. The picture of history is created through the interpretation of the original sources of contemporary contexts. Focusing on the dynamic and traditional characteristic of Russian constitutional concepts, I refer to a certain kind of value and the task of these concepts to justify and define the political and societal unity in every situation. This is done by combining the pursued future orientation of constitutional unity with the new acts of preservation of the traditional principles of the revolution. The different time layers of the constitutional concepts, the past, the present and the future, are the key aspects of storytelling in justifying the continuity and redefining the constitutional unity for the sake of reform. These aspects of constitutional concepts, in addition to all the other functions, have been the main elements of the argumentative structure of acting against opponents.