Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession

Negotiating the boundaries of the secular and of the religious is a core aspect of modern experience. In mid-nineteenth-century Germany, secularism emerged to oppose church establishment, conservative orthodoxy, and national division between Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Yet, as historian Todd H. Weir argues in this provocative book, early secularism was not the opposite of religion. It developed in the rationalist dissent of Free Religion and, even as secularism took more atheistic forms in Freethought and Monism, it was subject to the forces of the confessional system it sought to dismantle. Similar to its religious competitors, it elaborated a clear worldview, sustained social milieus, and was integrated into the political system. Secularism was, in many ways, Germany's fourth confession. While challenging assumptions about the causes and course of the Kulturkampf and modern antisemitism, this study casts new light on the history of popular science, radical politics, and social reform.

Energy levels, radiative rates and electron impact excitation rates for transitions in Si XII, Si XIII and Si XIV

In this paper, we report calculations of energy levels, radiative rates and electron impact excitation rates for transitions in Li-like Si XII, He-like Si XIII and H-like Si XIV. The grasp (general-purpose relativistic atomic structure package) is adopted for calculating energy levels and radiative rates, while for determining the collision strengths and subsequently the excitation rates, the Dirac atomic R-matrix code (darc) is used. Oscillator strengths, radiative rates and line strengths are reported for all E1, E2, M1 and M2 transitions among the lowest 24 levels of Si XII, 49 levels of Si XIII and 25 levels of Si XIV, belonging to the n≤5 configurations. Collision strengths have been averaged over a Maxwellian electron velocity distribution and the effective collision strengths so obtained are reported over a wide temperature range below 107 K. Comparisons have been made with similar data obtained from the flexible atomic code (fac) to highlight the importance of resonances, included in calculations from darc, in the determination of effective collision strengths. Discrepancies between the collision strengths from darc and fac, particularly for weak transitions and at low energies, are also discussed. Additionally, lifetimes are listed for all calculated levels of the above three ions, although no measurements are available with which to compare.