Histories

This article presents some information about the participation of nearly one hundred inhabitants of Castelló d’Empúries (currently located in the Alt Empordà region, province of Girona, in the northeastern corner of the Iberian Peninsula) in the Battle of Cape Orlando (coast of Sicily), which in 1299 pitted the fleets of James II of Aragon against those of his brother Frederick III of Sicily. The article provides the names of the participants and discusses several issues related to their involvement in this expedition. It also offers relevant information about the participation of the town’s inhabitants in other military ventures and about the commercial navy of the Empordà region during the same period.

The idea of progress constitutes a foundational, self-justifying myth of modernity. This paper explores the conservative critique of this myth, tracing its intellectual history and diagnosing its contemporary consequences. It argues that the progressive narrative is not a scientific fact but a secularized eschatology that has evolved into a form of technocratic rationalism rooted in a materialist metaphysics. The analysis examines the culmination of this worldview in transhumanism and diagnoses it, following Martin Heidegger, as a symptom of the “forgetting of Being” (Seinsvergessenheit). In contrast, the paper outlines the conservative alternative, which is not a simple return to the past but a reorientation toward a “vertical” dimension of existence grounded in Tradition, the symbolic cosmos, and a transcendent order. Ultimately, the paper frames the conservative stance as a form of metaphysical guardianship—an existential practice of “remembrance of Being” that keeps open the possibility of transcendence in an age of ontological nihilism.

This article focuses on ponds and reservoirs (PRs) in Sanuki, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. Sanuki is a region in the Seto Inland Sea with low annual rainfall. In 1999, there were 14,619 PRs in the 1877 km² area. Mannō-ike, the largest PR, is said to have been constructed at the beginning of the ninth century by Kūkai, one of Japan’s most prominent Buddhist monks. Such huge man-made structures could have been achieved only through collective human labor. The motivation to build large PRs was driven by the risk of drought. However, it is important to note that there were many more small PRs managed by individuals or families than one might imagine. PRs can range in size from huge to small and in location from mountainous areas to mountain foothills and plains. Rather than hard clustering, which classifies PRs according to a single logic, this article takes a new, historically holistic approach by using soft clustering to analyze the classification mechanism by considering the “Living Spaces” the world of all living organisms, including humans, and quantifying its complex logic.