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Early nineteenth-century Eurocentric perceptions of natural history led to the flora and fauna of Australia being thought of as deficient and inferior compared with those of other lands. By the 1820s, Australia had become known as ???the land of contrarieties???. This, and Eurocentric attitudes to nature in general, influenced the expectations and perceptions of immigrants throughout the century. Yet at the same time there was developing an aesthetic appreciation of the natural history of Australia. This thesis examines the tension between these two perceptions in the popular natural history writing of the nineteenth century, mainly through the writing of five authors ??? George Bennett (1804-1893), Louisa Anne Meredith (1812-1895), Samuel Hannaford (1937-1874), Horace Wheelwright (1815-1865) and Donald Macdonald (1859?-1932). George Bennett was a scientist, who saw Australian plants and animals more as scientific specimens than objects of beauty. Louisa Meredith perceived them in the familiar language of English romantic poetry. Samuel Hannaford used another language, that of popular British natural history writers of the mid-nineteenth century. To Horace Wheelwright, Australian animals were equally valuable to the sportsman???s gun as to the naturalist???s pen. Donald Macdonald was the only one of these major writers to have been born in Australia. Although proud of his British heritage, he rejoiced in the beauty of his native land. His writing demonstrates his joy, and his novel attitude to Australian natural history continued and developed in the present century.

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Dans cette thèse on définit et étudie un certain nombre de notions dans le cadre de la géométrie d'Arakelov qui, d'une part, possèdent un intérêt intrinsèque et, d'autre part, sont susceptibles d'applications à la théorie de l'approximation diophantienne.<br /><br />La plus grande partie du texte est consacrée à l'élaboration d'une théorie des hauteurs pour les sous-schémas et à la preuve de «formules de Hilbert-Samuel» pour ces hauteurs. Pour deux classes importantes de sous-schémas (les sous-schémas intègres et les sous-schémas «lisses avec multiplicités») on montre que la hauteur du sous-schéma relativement à une grande puissance d'un fibré en droites positif est asymptotiquement déterminée par la hauteur du cycle associé. La démonstration repose essentiellement sur le «théorème de Hilbert-Samuel arithmétique» de Gillet et Soulé, auquel elle se ramène par l'utilisation de techniques de géométrie analytique hermitienne. On fait ensuite une analyse plus fine du développement asymptotique des hauteurs de certains sous-schémas particuliers. Notamment, dans le cas de la dimension relative zéro, on exprime le terme constant du développement asymptotique en fonction de la ramification du sous-schéma, ce qui résout une question de Michel Laurent sur les hauteurs des matrices d'interpolation.<br /><br />Enfin, dans une partie indépendante, on expose diverses applications de méthodes arakeloviennes à des problèmes d'approximation diophantienne. En particulier on donne une nouvelle démonstration d'un critère classique d'indépendance algébrique dont l'originalité est qu'elle n'utilise plus de théorie de l'élimination mais uniquement des techniques de théorie de l'intersection arithmétique.

This study constitutes an attempt to bring the notion of stupidity into relation with ethics and creativity, through a reading of Samuel Beckett's Endgame. Employing Emmanuel Lévinas' theories on ethics - the responsible responsiveness in regard to the Other and the concept of the Face - the objective is to demonstrate how stupidity, conceived as lack of control and knowledge, functions as a precondition for the ethical relation between humans, as well as that of the individual to her creativity.

Let X denote a reduced algebraic variety and D a Weil divisor on X. The pair (X,D) is said to be semi-simple normal crossings (semi-snc) at a in X if X is simple normal crossings at a (i.e., a simple normal crossings hypersurface, with respect to a local embedding in a smooth ambient variety), and D is induced by the restriction to X of a hypersurface that is simple normal crossings with respect to X. For a pair (X,D), over a field of characteristic zero, we construct a composition of blowings-up f:X'-->X such that the transformed pair (X',D') is everywhere semi-simple normal crossings, and f is an isomorphism over the semi-simple normal crossings locus of (X,D). The result answers a question of Kolla'r.

"Elizabeth Carter's Legacy: Friendship and Ethics" examines the written evidence about the relationships between Elizabeth Carter and her father, Dr. Nocolas Carte; Catherine Talbot; Sir William Pulteney (Lord Bath); and Samuel Johnson to explain how intellectual and personal relationships may become the principal ethical sdource of human happiness. Based on their own set of moral values, such as intellectual and individual liberty and equality, the relationships between Carter and her friends challenged eighteenth-century traditional norms of human relationships. The primary source of this study, Carter's poetry and prose, including her letters, present the poet's experience of intellectual and individual friendship, reflecting Aristotle's ethics, specifically his moral teaching that views friendship as a human good contributing to human happiness--to the chief human good. Carter's poems devoted to her friends, such as Dr. Carter, Talbot, Montagu, Lord Bath, as well as her "A Dialogue" between Body and Mind, demonstrate her ethical legacy, her specific moral principles that elevated human relationships and human life. Carter's discussion of human relationships introduces the moral necessity of ethics in human life.

Let X denote a reduced algebraic variety and D a Weil divisor on X. The pair (X,D) is said to be semi-simple normal crossings (semi-snc) at a in X if X is simple normal crossings at a (i.e., a simple normal crossings hypersurface, with respect to a local embedding in a smooth ambient variety), and D is induced by the restriction to X of a hypersurface that is simple normal crossings with respect to X. For a pair (X,D), over a field of characteristic zero, we construct a composition of blowings-up f:X'-->X such that the transformed pair (X',D') is everywhere semi-simple normal crossings, and f is an isomorphism over the semi-simple normal crossings locus of (X,D). The result answers a question of Kolla'r.

Demandingness-based objections to utilitarianism and other consequentialist moral theories constitute the most important problem facing moral philosophers today. In this Thesis, I offer an explanation of what makes the demandingness objection compelling, namely, that utilitarianism alienates us from the projects and goals that define us as individual human beings (normally taken to be a separate objection). This suggests that solving the problems demandingness considerations present involves carving out a space for these projects and goals alongside the demands of a consequentialist morality; thus, we have two nearly independent sources of normative reasons, and the real question is how they interact. Various suggestions for answering this question are considered and rejected. I also discuss how Alastair Norcross’ scalar utilitarianism “solves” the demandingness problem, what the costs of this solution are, and how it might be integrated into a theory concerning the aforementioned interaction. / February 2008