http://hdl.handle.net/10900/42131 Tue, 27 Oct 2026 07:35:36 GMT 2026-10-27T07:35:36Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/184612 Cross-Cultural Knowledge Transfer in the Early Modern Period: The Taixi shuifa 泰西水法 (Hydromethods of the Great West; 1612) and Its Limited Success in China Kink, Sabine This dissertation provides the first in-depth investigation of the content and history of the Taixi shuifa 泰西水法 (Hydromethods of the Great West), a treatise that was co-authored by the Jesuit missionary Sabatino de Ursis and the eminent scholar-official Xu Guangqi 徐光啟 in Beijing in 1612. As one of the early works of the ‘apostolate of the book’ – through which the Jesuits sought to spread their Christian faith in the Middle Kingdom under the guise of Western learning – the Taixi shuifa presented to its learned Chinese readership Renaissance-era useful and reliable knowledge about water. To this end, it combined, in a unique and hybridising manner, theoretical considerations about water within the framework of the Aristotelian theory of the Four Elements with the description of hydraulic technologies and practical artisanal skills. Yet, despite an initially keen interest – particularly in the spectacular water pumps – and a remarkable, albeit all too brief, openness towards Western ideas, these technologies did not gain a lasting foothold in China. The fate of the Taixi shuifa therefore sheds an illuminating light not only on the intricacies of trying to convey this kind of innovative knowledge across borders, but also on the influence of different societal patterns on early modern developments in effective water management in both China and the West. This doctoral thesis, which is one of the outcomes of the DFG funded project “Translating Western Science, Technology and Medicine to Late Ming China: Convergences and Divergences in the Light of the Kunyu gezhi 坤輿格致 (Investigations of the Earth’s Interior; 1640) and the Taixi shuifa,” thus also makes an important contribution to ongoing discussions on the emergence of global divergences and their economic implications. Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/184612 2026-10-20T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/184143 Kurt Gödels theologische Notizen - Quellen und Interpretationen Lethen, Tim Die Arbeit trägt aus der Gabelsberger Kurzschrift transkribierte Notizen Kurt Gödels zusammen, in denen er sich mit Religion und Theologie beschäftigt. Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/184143 2026-10-07T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/183507 A Rhetorical Approach to the Historical Performance of Keyboard Music: 1740-1830 Muskens, Anders Cornelis This dissertation asks how classical rhetoric, as understood during the age of sensibility and early Romanticism (c. 1740–1830), can provide a practical, historically informed framework for interpreting and performing keyboard music. This framework serves both as a model for understanding the historical musician’s conception of performance, and as a methodology for present-day practitioners. Challenging accounts that treat musical rhetoric chiefly as a compositional taxonomy that declined around 1800, this dissertation foregrounds actio: embodied delivery, audience response, and the communication of feeling in performance. Drawing on musical treatises, aesthetic philosophy, acting and elocution manuals, and practice-led research, the study reconstructs period concepts of sensibility, sympathy, genius, imagination, judgement, taste, and the Sublime. It proposes the figures of the “feeling musician” and “rhetorical performer,” for whom historically informed performance entails coupling inner sentiment with outward signs through timing, articulation, tone, gesture, and physicality. Rhetorical principles of invention, disposition, figures, telos, and kairos are then applied to musical structure and interpretation. The dissertation also contains an artistic research component in which the author trained extensively in historical acting practices of the period in order to apply rhetorical principles analogously to musical performance at the keyboard. Four artistic case studies document this process and further demonstrate the proposed framework in practice. The first two case studies deal with historical declamation and gesture using period methods by John Walker and Gilbert Austin. This included the performance of texts by Shakespeare, Thomas Gray, and Edward Young. The other two case studies turn to music, presenting Forkel’s analysis of C. P. E. Bach’s Sonata in f minor, Wq. 76, and the author’s performance of Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata on fortepiano. The dissertation presents a new vision for historically informed performance. It is reframed as sympathetic interpretation: a historically grounded yet personally creative act that treats the score as a prompt rather than as a fixed text, enabling persuasive, emotionally immediate communication with present-day audiences. Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/183507 2026-09-18T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/181835 Wissenschaft trifft Schule - Mit Schüler:innen über KI kommunizieren Sever, Sercan; Dojčinović, Jelena Künstliche Intelligenz ist längst Teil der Lebenswelt vieler Schüler:innen. Entsprechend groß sind Interesse, Neugier und Diskussionsbedarf. Begegnungen zwischen Wissenschaftler:innen und Schüler:innen bieten die Chance, aktuelle Forschung verständlich zu vermitteln, Fragen aufzugreifen und gemeinsam über Chancen, Grenzen und gesellschaftliche Auswirkungen von KI nachzudenken. Diese Broschüre bündelt praktische Tipps für Wissenschaftler:innen, die mit Schüler:innen über KI ins Gespräch kommen möchten. Sie unterstützen bei der Vorbereitung, Durchführung und Reflexion solcher Begegnungen und helfen dabei, wissenschaftliche Inhalte zielgruppengerecht, verständlich und dialogorientiert zu vermitteln. Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/181835 2026-07-01T00:00:00Z