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Fifteen Eighty Four

Academic perspectives from Cambridge University Press

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A modern scientific revolution: quasars and how they changed our science of the cosmos

Imagine a time when our best images of the universe were black and white photos. This is the year 1960. Forget about galaxy evolution theory, we didn’t even have mature ideas on how they came to...

Christopher W. Churchill | 22 Dec 2025

“Moral Imagination in the 21st Century: Individuals and Organizations”

Moral imagination is a well-developed concept in business ethics, and one that is closely associated with Patricia Werhane, whose much-cited 1999 textbook argued that ethical failures often arise...

Patricia H. Werhane, David J. Bevan | 22 Dec 2025

Reassessing the Peloponnesian War

In the early summer of 431 BCE, villages and farms in Attica were abandoned as people moved into Athens. They were fleeing the advance of one of the largest armies ever assembled in ancient Greece. At...

Samuel Gartland, Robin Osborne | 18 Dec 2025

How do you solve a problem like Napoleon?

Napoleon Bonaparte: Corsican, illustrious general, First Consul, Emperor of the French, exile, prisoner. It’s quite a CV. He was also a PR expert ahead of his time, and one of his chosen media for this...

Clare Siviter | 18 Dec 2025

Politeness in Chinese Social Interaction

2: How the Chinese Greet One Another? The title of this entry may sound like the title of a beginner’s Chinese language course featuring the expression ni hao 你好 as a simple greeting. However,...

Julianne House, Dániel Z. Kádár | 18 Dec 2025

The Power of Perception

I am now sitting in front of my laptop and staring at a text on the screen. In other words, I have a perception of it. My perception is from a particular perspective. However, I can easily switch from...

Frode Kjosavik | 16 Dec 2025

Institutional Change and Property Rights before the Industrial Revolution: Wardship in Britain, 1485-1660

Last year, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.” While the citation may...

Sean Bottomley | 15 Dec 2025

Dreams, delirium and swoons: ancient doctors and the edges of consciousness

Have you ever wondered how Greek and Roman doctors thought about patients who heard voices or saw scary things that did not really exist? What did they make of people who seemed “out of it”? Could...

Andrés Pelavski | 12 Dec 2025

Do we even need economic and social human rights?

Should every human being, regardless of their class, gender, sexuality, race, religion and origin be entitled to certain basic economic, social and cultural human rights such as adequate renumeration...

Christian Olaf Christiansen | 12 Dec 2025

Understanding Contemporary Conflict: It’s Nationalism, Stupid!

Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked many in the West. So did Hamas’s surprise attack on southern Israel in October 2023 and Israel’s response of massive violence...

Lars-Erik Cederman, Luc Girardin, Carl Müller-Crepon | 12 Dec 2025

The Three Economic Enlightenments

What is the right thing to do? You probably find yourself asking this question quite often. Philosophers, both inside and outside academia, have pondered it by exploring its meaning and considering potential...

Paolo Santori | 11 Dec 2025

Blog for Historical Trauma Book

What will become of those currently experiencing the wars we see in the media? Take the wars in Ukraine, Gaza/Israel and Sudan, for example. Will the children be permanently scarred into adulthood, and...

Professor Andreas Maercker | 11 Dec 2025