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Abstract: Travel is often thought to be an adventure, an exploration, a way of knowing self and world, a break from the stresses of everyday life, a vacation. But there can be a dark side to travel, as in voyages that are part of invasion, conflict and enforced transport. Here, I wish to concentrate on conflict, domination, murder and genocide and do so, at various moments, by referring to the Norse sagas, including the encounter with the Skrælings in the New World and, more briefly, Columbus’ and the Spaniards’ violent treatment of the Natives in the New World and the German transport, torture and murder of Jews in the Shoah, or Holocaust.

This article offers a conceptual study of a scientific practice. Phylogenetic analysis is one of the main methods of evolutionary biology as it allows us to deduce the evolutionary relationships between different species or organisms. In current practice, these analyses are often performed with the help of molecular data, resulting in what are called molecular phylogenies. A major question is what is the best way to characterize this practice? We begin with a presentation of this method articulated in four stages: (1) identification; (2) alignment of homologous sequences (stemming from a common ancestor); (3) construction (4) interpretation of phylogenetic trees. We show that phylogenetic analyses are not experiments, and therefore do not belong to the “laboratory style”, as defined by Hacking. This practice does not correspond to a typical practice from the historical sciences, as described by Cleland. Although there is only a partial correspondence between phylogenetic analysis and these conceptualizations, we argue that each confrontation sheds light on distinct aspects of this practice. We also question the idea of a strong methodological separation between experimental sciences and historical sciences.

The article is about theory and practice in Shakespeare, but while he used the word “practice,” he never employed the term “theory.” After discussing practice a little, I shall examine how Shakespeare refers to poetry and poets, philosophy and philosophers with some brief connections with art, theatre, music, painting and mimesis. Shakespeare showed no inclination for criticism or theory in essays or non-fiction prose, but, as can be seen, for instance, in Hamlet’s instructions to the players, his work, poetry and plays, contain if not a theory of art, theatre and poetry at least some representations of and reflections on such matters by speakers, narrators and characters.

Montaigne and Las Casas are important thinkers and writers, as are many others, including Shakespeare, as a poet, whose work is complex enough in its modernity that it would be hard to condemn him as a poet as Plato did Homer. Aristotle analyzed Greek tragedy to see how it worked in terms of a framework of anagnorisis and catharsis, that is, recognition and the purging of pity and terror. Shakespeare revisits and reshapes Homer in Troilus and Cressida and remakes Plutarch in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra while playing on the classical epic and mythological themes in Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece. Plato, a poet as well as a philosopher, and a great writer if one does not like those categories, may have feared the poet within himself. Although assuming with Plato that philosophy is more universal and just than poetry, Aristotle takes the analysis of poetry and drama seriously in Poetics, and also discusses ethics, aesthetics and style in Rhetoric. So, while I discuss Plato as a framework, I am not presuming that writing on the relations among the good, the true, the just and the beautiful stop with him. I am also making the assumption that Las Casas, Montaigne, Shakespeare and other poets and writers deserve to be taken seriously in the company of Plato. Las Casas and Montaigne respond to radically changing realities and shake the very basis of traditional ethics (especially in understanding of the “other”) and work in harmony with the greatest poets and writers of a new era often called modernity like Shakespeare, who is in the good company of Manrique, Villon, Ronsard, Du Bellay, Juan de la Cruz, Luis de León, Lope de Vega, Quevedo and Calderón. Long before, Dante and Petrarch were exploring in their poetry ethical and aesthetic imperatives and broke new ground doing so. Nor can Las Casas and Montaigne be separated from other great writers like Rabelais and Cervantes, who carry deep philosophical and ethical sensibility in their work while responding to reality by providing aesthetically – even sensuously – shaped images that always leave a margin for ambiguity because conflicts are part of an ambiguous reality.