Saturday 29 September 2012

Tom Brown's Schooldays and the Olympic Games

Before the first modern Olympic games, held in Athens in 1896, there were regional “Olympic festivals” motivated by various ideologies and consisted of an amalgam of sports, for example, the 1850 Wenlock Olympic Class, a small village in Shropshire had tilting, football, quoits, cricket and fun events such as a wheelbarrow race (Toohey 2007 : 32).

The motivation for holding the Olympic festivals involved a valuing of the perceived glory of the ancient world and a belief of the intrinsic values of playing sport, often associated with a militant nationalism, such as "fitter men of the nation will mean the nation is more successful at war", for example. The Olympic ideal was that people were motivated to  play sport due to its intrinsic benefits, thus the compeditors were amateurs. It was associated with a “Muscular Christianity” which held the value of “a sound mind in a sound body”, comparable to the ideals of moral and physical development found in “Tom Browns Schooldays” by Thomas Hughes, a ex-pupil of Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School who extolled the virtues of “Muscular Christianity” (Toohey 2007 : 31). The Ideal of Olympianism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. It blends sport with culture and education. Creating a way of life based on the joy found in effort, educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles (Toohey 2007 : 42). Thus the early Olympic festivals were attempting to revive a somewhat fictional memory of the Greek Olympic games that were to embody the “Muscular Christianity” found in “Tom Browns Schooldays”.

The Modern Olympics grew out of the correspondences of individuals holding local “Olympic” events and the first attempt to internationalise the “Olympic” festivals was Dr Brooks of the Much Wenlock Olympics in 1881 who attempted to organise an Olympic festival in Athens. This attempt failed but the Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who met Dr Brooks in 1890 while organising an international congress on Physical Education managed to fashion a Olympic revival which culminated in the 1896 Olympic games in Athens.

Hosting the Olympics Games is now seen as a great opportunity for revenue, economic development and urban renewal (Shoval 2002 : 584) and since the 2008 Olympic games has become a “mega event” (Gold & Gold 2008 : 300) thus there is much competition amongst potential hosts. For the initial Modern Olympic games held in Athens in 1896 the instructions were written in French, at the time French had a history of being the language of diplomacy and high culture within Europe and thus had significant linguistic capital. The London bid for the 2012 Olympic Games won over the Paris bid in July 2005. The London bid won in terms of the cultural resources that London could bring, comedians, actors, monarchy with a rhetoric of urban renewal and infrastructural development to areas of the city.

For the 2012 Olympic games, French was selected to be one of the official languages of the 2012 Olympic games, it was used to introduce the games, it took precedence during the presentation of medals and was used in other ceremonies, was present on “billboards and pageantry” and used for signage and commentary. This was a requirement imposed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as part of the conditions for hosting the 2012 Olympic games. The motivations behind this may reflect an awareness of the linguistic dominance of English, thus attempt to introduce a degree of linguistic pluralism and also be a nod toward the history of the Olympic games.
Bibliography

Gold, John R. & Gold, Margaret M. (2008). Olympic Cities: Regeneration, City Rebranding and Changing Urban Agendas. In Geography Compass. Volume 2, 5. Pages 300 -318.
Shoval, N. (2002). A new phase in the competition for the Olympic Gold: the London and New York bids for the 2012 Games. In the Journal of Urban Affairs. Volume 24, 5. pages 583 -599 

Toohey, K & Veal, A.J. (2007). The Olympic Games: A Social Science Perspective. Published By CAB international. Pages 31 & 42.

Tuesday 11 September 2012

Sunday 2 September 2012

On the De Rerum Natura  "Nature of Things" by Titus Lucretius Carus, translated by William Eleary Leonard. The poems main purpose was to convey the Epicurian philosophical position and provide comfort for a Gaius Memmius. Ataraxia is described as a kind of peacefulness of mind  derived from suspending judgement, in terms of belief in the afterlife, the supernatural and political positions. The Stoics defined this as mental tranquility, apatheia, the absence of passion.

It has content that is a near the modern view,

     The narrow path of man's ambition;
     Since all their wisdom is from others' lips,
     And all they seek is known from what they've heard
     And less from what they've thought. Nor is this folly
     Greater to-day, nor greater soon to be,
     Than' twas of old.

There are things outside immediate human experience, that cannot be directly known within the human life span, it takes many generations of accreted knowledge. The limits of Titus Lucretius Caruses knowledge is thus, he knows the world is not eternal, uses a theory of atoms described by Democritus, he looks at mist and air and talks about ether. He describes a theory where the closer the planetary bodies and constellations are to the earth, the slower they move through the sky, thus the sun and moon move slower than star constellations. Looking at his descriptions of the origins of life, in Book V, he writes that "from the sky breathing creatures can never have dropped" and "Nor land dwellers have ever come up from the seas of salt" and thus what remains is that life came from the earth. This argument is justified by observation of the growth of plants, with the " concretion of rain and the heat of the sun" and he describes the earth by the metaphor of "Mother". In the absence of 2000 years of cultural evolution and the recent development of scientific enquiry I doubt I could reach a better conclusion. I find it interesting that he considers the other alternatives as well, this could be due to other sources, such as origin myths.

Near the end of book V it has a description of the plague of Athens, based on the description by Thucydides (431 BC) in his The History of the Peloponnesian War.

Its description via wikipedia is here.

 Various pathogenic sources have been suggested, including Measels (morbillivirus), Yersinia pestis, Salmonella typhi, influenza with a toxin producing staphylococci, more recently Rickettsia prowazekii and hemorrhagic viruses. The strongest argument seems to be for Rickettsia prowzekii, which is spread by the human body louse Pediculus humanus and is a small intracellar bacteria that stains poorly with Gram stain (Murray et al 2009 : 432). Clinical disease starts eight days after exposure with non specific symptoms, then myalgia, fever, headaches and potentially pneumonia, arthralgia and neurological involvement. A petechial or macular rash occurs in 20 to 80 % of patients. Mortality is around 20 to 30 % when untreated.

Ultimately the pathogenic source of the plague of Athens cannot be conclusively identified, there may be issues with Thucydides description.

Bibliography

Murray, Patrick : Rosenthal, Ken S & Pfaller, Michael A. (2009). Medical Microbiology. (Sixth Edition). Published by Mosby Elsevier. Page 432.