Franciscus Cornelis Donders was educated at Duizel and Boxmeer before entering the Military Medical School and the medical faculty at Utrecht University in 1835. In 1840, he received his MD from Leiden and spent 2 years in practice at Vlissingen before returning to Utrecht, where he was appointed as an extraordinary professor to lecture on forensic medicine, anthropology, general biology and ophthalmology. Refraction by the eye is complex, since the ray of light passes through many changes of refractive index in its path, and Donders simplified the account of the process by establishing an equivalent refractive system: the reduced eye. When Donders opened an Eye Hospital in 1858, he devoted himself to clinical ophthalmology, making fundamental advances in providing spectacles to correct errors of refraction-which he separated from errors of accommodation. In 1862, Donders was promoted as an ordinary professor at Utrecht and he handed over the greater part of his practice to his pupil Hermann Snellen. From narrow specialisation, Donders was freed to return to the broader physiology; subatmospheric pressure in the pleura was for a while referred to as 'Donders' pressure'; he also devised a method of measuring the mental reaction time taken in making discrimination, rather than the simple reaction time in which no choice is involved. He was widely honoured, presiding at international congresses, and elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society. He died suddenly on 14 March 1889, but his work lives on.

Over de vertaling in het Nederlands van het Corpus Iuris Civilis.

René Descartes hat einen festen Platz in der Philosophiegeschichte, sein Rationalismus hat die europäische Aufklärung geprägt. Zu Lebzeiten hingegen erfährt er nicht nur Wertschätzung, insbesondere unter den Theologen hat er entschiedene Gegner. Im Herbst 1649 folgt er einer Einladung der schwedischen Königin Christine nach Stockholm. Wenige Monate später stirbt der französische Philosoph dort – wie es heißt, an einer Lungenentzündung. So jedenfalls die „offizielle“ Version, wie sie sich bis heute in Descartes-Biographien findet. Doch bereits kurz nach Descartes Tod kursierten Gerüchte, es sei Gift im Spiel gewesen. Theodor Ebert geht diesem Verdacht nach und rollt den „Fall Descartes“ noch einmal auf. Anhand vorliegenden, aber bislang wenig beachteten Dokumenten rekonstruiert er zunächst den Krankheitsverlauf. Dabei ergeben sich erhebliche Zweifel an der Diagnose „Lungenentzündung“, viele Indizien deuten darauf hin, daß Descartes tatsächlich keines natürlichen Todes gestorben ist. In einem zweiten Schritt erörtert der Autor, wer ein Motiv und wer die Möglichkeit für einen Mord an Descartes gehabt haben könnte. Am Ende der akribischen Untersuchung erscheint der rätselhafte Tod des René Descartes in einem neuen Licht. Der Anhang enthält zahlreiche Dokumente in Übersetzung, die es den Lesern ermöglichen, die Argumentation des Autors nachzuvollziehen und sich ein eigenes Urteil zu bilden.

The Subject of Rosi Braidotti: Politics and Concepts brings into focus the diverse influence of the work of Rosi Braidotti on academic fields in the humanities and the social sciences such as the study and scholarship in - among others - feminist theory, political theory, continental philosophy, philosophy of science and technology, cultural studies, ethnicity and race studies. Inspired by Braidotti's philosophy of nomadic relations of embodied thought, the volume is a mapping exercise of productive engagements and instructive interactions by a variety of international, outstanding and world-renowned scholars with texts and concepts developed by Braidotti throughout her immense body of work. In Braidotti's work, traversing themes of engagements emerge of politics and philosophy across generations and continents. Therefore, the edited volume invites prominent scholars at different stages of their careers and from around the world to engage with Braidotti's work in terms of concepts and/or political practice.

Central to this essay is the debate about the ultimate purpose of studying history and about the social role of the historian as it was conducted in the first two decades after the Second World War in Belgium and the Netherlands. Many historians took the view after the war that the study of the past must contribute directly to (political) reconstruction and the shaping of (democratic) public opinion. In the eyes of historians like the Amsterdam Professor Jan Romein and the powerful Belgian Inspector for History Teaching Leopold Flam, historiography should not be focused on knowledge of the past as such, and the same was certainly true of history teaching. On the contrary, the social capital that they represented was founded on their involvement with the present. Against this presentist position there grew the conception that the study of the past for its own sake remained of great importance in post-war society, and in fact that such an orientation towards the past itself and a critical attitude towards those who wished to use history to shape contemporary society could actually help prevent a new dictatorship or a new conflict. This historicist standpoint was regarded as anything but ‘aloof’ or ‘unethical’ by its advocates like the Utrecht Professor Pieter Geyl.