Colonial designs: Thomas Karsten and the planning of urban Indonesia

Thomas Karsten (1885 – 1945) is undoubtedly a major figure in the history of architecture and town planning in Indonesia. Between 1915 and 1941 he was involved in town planning in 12 of the 19 municipalities and towns in Java (the most prominent exception being Surabaya) 3 of the 9 towns in Sumatra, and the only town in Borneo This paper does not attempts to investigate or question his importance in this field but to place his architectural and town planning ideas in the context of his broader politico-cultural ideas and activities in the Dutch East Indies between 1914 and 1942, and these, in turn, in the context of an evolving colonialism and colonial discourse.

Event that never happened : the history and politics of decentralisation in Victoria and New South Wales 1885-1985

The thesis is an account of movements and policies for decentralisation of population and economic activity away from metropolitan to non-metropolitan areas in Victoria and N.S.W. in the period 1885-1985. It examines the pull from the country and the push from the capitals for decentralisation. Ballarat (Victoria) and Bathurst (N.S.W.) are used as case studies. Introductory chapters describe the historic pattern of population distribution in the two Colonies/States and discuss theories about the spatial distribution of population and industry. Chapters recounting and discussing the history and politics of decentralisation in Victoria and N.S.W. are organised in three periods: 1885-1940; 1940-1965; 1965-1985. A more decentralised distribution of population in Victoria and N.S.W. was almost always widely accepted as being in the public interest. Decentralisation rose and fell recurrently on the issue attention cycle. The pull from the country was fragmented and locally self-interested. The push from the capitals occurred only when life or its quality was perceived as threatened because of factors related to city size. Governments in both States introduced micro policies ostensibly to counter formidable centralising forces. In the 1970s there was an abortive attempt to implement a selective decentralisation policy in N.S.W. The thesis argues that decentralisation did not happen because: (1) there was not a consistent set of values and goals underlying the pull and push; (2) there was never a sustained, unified constituency for decentralisation, even in the country; (3) the power to influence, subvert or obstruct decentralisation policies was too widely diffused; (4) insufficient account was taken in decentralisation policymaking of the underlying economic, social and political dynamics.

Models of scientific community: Charles Sanders Peirce to Thomas Kuhn

Scientific community' is common currency in the study of science, largely due to Kuhn's use of the term in his highly influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. As this article explains, however, 'scientific community' was not of Kuhn's coining. It was hinted at by Peirce, and expressly designated by Royce. On a few occasions Fleck affirmed a scientific community, while Polanyi studied it in some detail. The article concludes by comparing these thinkers' 'communitarian' interpretations of science.

Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn: priority and credit

The article argues that Polanyi was a likely source of influence on the theory of science that Kuhn developed in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). The striking similarity between Kuhn’s idea of incommensurability and Polanyi’s rendering of scientific controversy in Personal Knowledge is featured here, and is used to expose a tension between Polanyi’s notions of scientific controversy and unfolding truth.