The origin of the asymmetry in the irradiation distribution at high latitudes

The possibility of using solar energy during winter depends on the available solar radiation and on the geometry of the receiving surface. For high latitudes, the annual distribution of the available radiation is characterized by high asymmetry with a large amount of solar radiation from high altitude angles during the summer and a small amount of direct radiation from small altitude angles during the winter. This article deals with the origin of the difference between available solar radiation during summer and winter at high latitudes. Factors like the tilt of the earth’s axis, the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, absorption and scattering of radiation in the atmosphere and seasonal changes in the weather conditions are discussed. Numerical examples of how these factors contribute to the reduction of the winter radiation compared to the summer radiation on surfaces with different orientation in Stockholm, latitude 59.4°N, are given. It is shown that the influence of the atmosphere and seasonal changes in the climate, and not pure earth-sun geometry, are the main reasons why it is hard to utilize solar energy at high latitudes during the winter.

The Philosophy of Dissonant Children : Stanley Cavell's Wittgensteinian Philosophical Therapies as an Educational Conversation

Education is often understood as a process whereby children come to conform to the norms teachers believe should govern our practices. This picture problematically presumes that educators know in advance what it means for children to go on the way that is expected of them. In this essay Viktor Johansson suggests a revision of education, through the philosophy of Stanley Cavell, that can account for both the attunement in our practices and the possible dissonance that follows when the teacher and child do not go on together. There is an anxiety generated by the threat of disharmony in our educational undertakings that may drive teachers toward philosophy in educational contexts. Here Johansson offers a philosophical treatment of this intellectual anxiety that teachers may experience when they, upon meeting dissonant children, search for epistemic justifications of their practices—a treatment whereby dissonant children can support teachers in dissolving their intellectual frustrations.

'In Charge of the Truffula Seeds' : On Children's Literature, Rationality and Children's Voices in Philosophy

In this paper I investigate how philosophy can speak for children and how children can have a voice in philosophy and speak for philosophy. I argue that we should understand children as responsible rational individuals who are involved in their own philosophical inquiries and who can be involved in our own philosophical investigations-not because of their rational abilities, but because we acknowledge them as conversational partners, acknowledge their reasons as reasons, and speak for them as well as let them speak for us and our rational community. In order to argue this I turn, first, to Gareth Matthews' philosophy of childhood and suggest a reconstruction of some of his concepts in line with the philosophy of Stanley Cavell. Second, in order to examine more closely our conceptions of rationality and our pictures of children, I consider the children's books, The Lorax and Where is My Sister? and Henrik Ibsen's play, The Wild Duck.