scholarly journals I. The Croonian Lecture.—On the theory of the vertebrate skull

1859 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 381-457 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Biological Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Small Space ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Organic Structure ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The Mind

The necessity of discussing so great a subject as the Theory of the Vertebrate Skull in the small space of time allotted by custom to a lecture, has its advantages as well as its drawbacks. As, on the present occasion, I shall suffer greatly from the disadvantages of the limitation, I will, with your permission, avail myself to the uttermost of its benefits. It will be necessary for me to assume much that I would rather demonstrate, to suppose known much that I would rather set forth and explain at length; but on the other hand, I may consider myself excused from entering largely either into the history of the subject, or into lengthy and controversial criticisms upon the views which are, or have been, held by others. The biological science of the last half-century is honourably distinguished from that of preceding epochs, by the constantly increasing prominence of the idea, that a community of plan is discernible amidst the manifold diversities of organic structure. That there is nothing really aberrant in nature; that the most widely different organisms are connected by a hidden bond; that an apparently new and isolated structure will prove, when its characters are thoroughly sifted, to be only a modification of something which existed before,—are propositions which are gradually assuming the position of articles of faith in the mind of the investigators of animated nature, and are directly, or by implication, admitted among the axioms of natural history.

scholarly journals VIII. Observations on bees

1792 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 128-195 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind

The common bee, from a number of peculiarities in its œconomy, has called forth the attention of the curious; and, from the profit arising from its labours, it has become the object of the interested; therefore, no wonder it has excited universal attention, even from the savage to the most civilized people: but it has hardly been considered by the anatomist; at least the two modes of investigation have not gone so much hand in hand, as they ought to have done. The history of the bee has rather been considered as a fit subject for the curious at large, whence more has been conceived, than observed. Swammerdam, indeed, has rather erred on the other side, having, with great industry, been very minute on the particular structure of the bee. I shall here observe, that it is commonly not only unnecessary to be minute in our description of parts in natural history, but in general improper. It is unnecessary, when it does not apply to any thing, but the thing itself, more especially if it be of no consequence; but whenever it applies, then it should so far be treated accurately. Minutiae beyond what is essential, tire the mind, and render that which should entertain along with

Geology and industrial consultancy: Sir William Boyd Dawkins (1837–1929) and the Kent Coalfield

1991 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Tweedale
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Source Material ◽  
The Other ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Geological Science ◽  
Chief Interest ◽  
Proper Account

In Britain's development as the first industrial nation, the crucial importance of surveyors, mining engineers and geologists in prospecting and exploiting minerals and raw materials seems self-evident. Yet historians of geology have yet to take proper account of this aspect of geological science. Why is this ? One reason may simply be that the historiography of the subject itself is only relatively recent and many areas, besides industrial geology, await coverage. Or perhaps the nature of the source material is to blame. While scientific geologists filled museums with their fossils and notebooks, engaged in well-publicized controversies of the day, and wrote numerous books and articles, industrial geologists often left relatively few papers and sometimes never published their results. On the other hand, it has been suggested that the neglect of economic geology may be due to a rapidly developing bias in the subject itself. A recent study has highlighted the fact that the history of British geology, as seen through the eyes of historians at least, appears to comprise two different but closely interconnected strands. The first relates to natural history and looks toward the scientific or ‘pure’ front; the second connects with mining and the search for raw materials and is slanted towards the industrial or ‘applied’ horizon. In the same way that the scientific branch of geology brought fame and fortune in Victorian times, so the protagonists of ‘pure’ geology have so far been the chief interest of historians – so much so that the literature so far lacks detailed case studies of the careers and work of applied geologists.

Albert Schweitzer and the Jews

2014 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-398
Author(s):  
James Carleton Paget
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
The Other ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Long Life ◽  
The One

Albert Schweitzer's engagement with Judaism, and with the Jewish community more generally, has never been the subject of substantive discussion. On the one hand this is not surprising—Schweitzer wrote little about Judaism or the Jews during his long life, or at least very little that was devoted principally to those subjects. On the other hand, the lack of a study might be thought odd—Schweitzer's work as a New Testament scholar in particular is taken up to a significant degree with presenting a picture of Jesus, of the earliest Christian communities, and of Paul, and his scholarship emphasizes the need to see these topics against the background of a specific set of Jewish assumptions. It is also noteworthy because Schweitzer married a baptized Jew, whose father's academic career had been disadvantaged because he was a Jew. Moreover, Schweitzer lived at a catastrophic time in the history of the Jews, a time that directly affected his wife's family and others known to him. The extent to which this personal contact with Jews and with Judaism influenced Schweitzer either in his writings on Judaism or in his life will in part be the subject of this article.

scholarly journals Observations upon the Natural History of Epidemic Diarrhoea

1910 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 602-777 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. H. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Health Department ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Town ◽  
Made In

The following observations upon the Natural History of Epidemic Diarrhoea were made in Mansfield during the summer and autumn of 1908. The fact that at the time the writer was engaged in preparing a paper—to which the present paper is to some extent complementary—upon the epidemiological relations of season and disease, lent special interest to the enquiries regularly made from the Health Department of this town into the circumstances attending fatal attacks of diarrhoea. Early in the season a more than usually extensive enquiry was made into one of these fatal attacks in an area where an outbreak of diarrhoea appeared to be spreading outwards from a group of old privy-middens. To test how far the condemnation of the latter was justifiable another area was taken on the other side of the town, where the houses were newly built and provided exclusively with water-closets; and records, collected by house-to-house visitation, were obtained of all cases of epidemic diarrhoea, whether non-fatal or otherwise, occurring in these localities. The enquiries thus begun were afterwards extended so as to embrace two fairly large districts, a chance of doing this being provided by the opportune postponement of the addition to the department of certain work of inspection which had been impending at the beginning of the summer. These districts were several times revisited and scattered observations were also made throughout the other parts of the town. During 1909, while there was no opportunity of making extended observations, there were valuable opportunities during the course of the routine inspections of the summer of testing and re-testing the principal results obtained during 1908.

Emerson's Atom and the Matter of Suffering

2009 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-47
Author(s):  
Mark Noble
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Classical Field Theory ◽  
Classical Field ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Solid Bodies ◽  
Lines Of Force

This essay argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson's interest in the cutting-edge science of his generation helps to shape his understanding of persons as fluid expressions of power rather than solid bodies. In his 1872 "Natural History of Intellect," Emerson correlates the constitution of the individual mind with the tenets of Michael Faraday's classical field theory. For Faraday, experimenting with electromagnetism reveals that the atom is a node or point on a network, and that all matter is really the arrangement of energetic lines of force. This atomic model offers Emerson a technology for envisioning a materialized subjectivity that both unravels personal identity and grants access to impersonal power. On the one hand, adopting Faraday's field theory resonates with many of the affirmative philosophical and ethical claims central to Emerson's early essays. On the other hand, however, distributing the properties of Faraday's atoms onto the properties of the person also entails moments in which materialized subjects encounter their own partiality, limitation, and suffering. I suggest that Emerson represents these aspects of experience in terms that are deliberately discrepant from his conception of universal power. He presumes that if every experience boils down to the same lines of force, then the particular can be trivialized with respect to the general. As a consequence, Emerson must insulate his philosophical assertions from contamination by our most poignant experiences of limitation. The essay concludes by distinguishing Emersonian "Necessity" from Friedrich Nietzsche's similar conception of amor fati, which routes the affirmation of fate directly through suffering.

scholarly journals On the Tumulus of Choban Tepeh in the Troad

1897 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 319-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Calvert
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Road ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
On The Road ◽  
The Hill

I derive the materials of the present paper from some memoranda which I find amongst my archaeological notes and which relate to certain explorations to which I was not a party, made so long ago as 1887. I have thought that the particulars then obtained may be deemed sufficiently interesting to deserve a record in the history of Trojan archaeological discovery.The subject is one of the four small tumuli dotted about and near the hill of Balli-Dagh, the crest of which according to the now exploded theory of Le Chevalier (1785) was supposed to represent the Pergamos of Troy. In a memoir contributed to the Journal of the Archaeological Institute of 1864, I proved that the site in question was no other than that of the ancient city of Gergis. In the same paper I gave an account of the results of the excavation of one of the group of three tumuli on Balli-Dagh, the so-named Tomb of Priam. The other two, namely Le Chevalier's Tomb of Hector, and an unnamed hillock, were excavated respectively by Sir John Lubbock (about 1878) and Dr. Schliemann (1882) without result. The present relates to the fourth mound on the road between the villages of Bournarbashi and Arablar (as shown in the published maps), which goes by the name of Choban Tepeh (Shepherd's hillock) and the Tomb of Paris, according to Rancklin (1799).

XXIII. On the water-barometer erected in the hall of the Royal Society

1832 ◽  
Vol 122 ◽  
pp. 539-574 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Metallic Tube ◽  
French Academy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Made In

I have for some time entertained an opinion, in common with some others who have turned their attention tot he subject, that a good series of observations with a Water-Barometer, accurately constructed, might throw some light upon several important points of physical science: amongst others, upon the tides of the atmosphere; the horary oscillations of the counterpoising column; the ascending and descending rate of its greater oscillations; and the tension of vapour at different atmospheric temperatures. I have sought in vain in various scientific works, and in the Transactions of Philosophical Societies, for the record of any such observations, or for a description of an instrument calculated to afford the required information with anything approaching to precision. In the first volume of the History of the French Academy of Sciences, a cursory reference is made, in the following words, to some experiments of M. Mariotte upon the subject, of which no particulars appear to have been preserved. “Le même M. Mariotte fit aussi à l’observatoire des experiences sur le baromètre ordinaire à mercure comparé au baromètre à eau. Dans l’un le mercure s’eléva à 28 polices, et dans Fautre l’eau fut a 31 pieds Cequi donne le rapport du mercure à l’eau de 13½ à 1.” Histoire de I'Acadérmie, tom. i. p. 234. It also appears that Otto Guricke constructed a philosophical toy for the amusement of himself and friends, upon the principle of the water-barometer; but the column of water probably in this, as in all the other instances which I have met with, was raised by the imperfect rarefaction of the air in the tube above it, or by filling with water a metallic tube, of sufficient length, cemented to a glass one at its upper extremity, and fitted with a stop-cock at each end; so that when full the upper one might be closed and the lower opened, when the water would fall till it afforded an equipoise to the pressure of the atmo­sphere. The imperfections of such an instrument, it is quite clear, would render it totally unfit for the delicate investigations required in the present state of science; as, to render the observations of any value, it is absolutely necessary that the water should be thoroughly purged of air, by boiling, and its insinuation or reabsorption effectually guarded against. I was convinced that the only chance of securing these two necessary ends, was to form the whole length of tube of one piece of glass, and to boil the water in it, as is done with mercury in the common barometer. The practical difficulties which opposed themselves to such a construction long appeared to me insurmount­able; but I at length contrived a plan for the purpose, which, having been honoured with the approval of the late Meteorological Committee of this Society, was ordered to be carried into execution by the President and Council.

scholarly journals Kant, Nietzsche and the idealization of friendship into nihilism

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (128) ◽  
pp. 401-417
Author(s):  
Paul van Tongeren
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Literary Imagination ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The 19Th Century

Is friendship still possible under nihilistic conditions? Kant and Nietzsche are important stages in the history of the idealization of friendship, which leads inevitably to the problem of nihilism. Nietzsche himself claims on the one hand that only something like friendship can save us in our nihilistic condition, but on the other hand that precisely friendship has been unmasked and become impossible by these very conditions. It seems we are struck in the nihilistic paradox of not being allowed to believe in the possibility of what we cannot do without. Literary imagination since the 19th century seems to make us even more skeptical. Maybe Beckett provides an illustration of a way out that fits well to Nietzsche's claim that only "the most moderate, those who do not require any extreme articles of faith" will be able to cope with nihilism.

scholarly journals Dialogue with The Master: Early Shī‘a Encounters with Akbarīan Mysticism

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-178
Author(s):  
Leila Chamankhah
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Lively Discussion ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ibn Arabi ◽  
The One

Muḥy al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī’s theoretical mysticism has been the subject of lively discussion among Iranian Sufis since they first encountered it in the seventh century. ‘Abdul Razzāq Kāshānī was the pioneer and forerunner of the debate, followed by reading and interpreting al-Shaykh al-Akbar’s key texts, particularly Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam (Bezels of Wisdom) by future generations of Shī‘ī scholars. Along with commentaries and glosses on his works, every element of ibn ‘Arabī’s mysticism, from his theory of the oneness of existence (waḥdat al-wujūd) to his doctrines of nubuwwa, wilāya, and khatm al-wilāya, was accepted by his Shī‘ī peers, incorporated into their context and adjusted to Shī‘a doctrinal platform. This process of internalization and amalgamation was so complete that after seven centuries, it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between Ibn ‘Arabī’s theory of waḥdat al-wujūd, or his doctrines of wilāya and khatm al-wilāya and those of his Shī‘ī readers. To have a clearer picture of the philosophical and mystical activities and interests of Shī‘ī scholars in Iran under Ilkhanids (1256-1353), I examined the intellectual and historical contexts of seventh century Iran. The findings of my research are indicative of the contribution of mystics such as ‘Abdul Razzāq Kāshānī to both the school of Ibn ‘Arabī in general and of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī in particular on the one hand, and to the correlation between Sufism and Shī‘īsm on the other. What I call the ‘Shī‘ītization of Akbarīan Mysticism’ started with Kāshānī and can be regarded as a new chapter in the history of Iranian Sufism.

scholarly journals XX. Discovery of the metamorphosis in the second type of the cirripedes, viz. the lepades, completing the natural history of these singular animals, and confirming their affinity with the crustacea

1835 ◽  
Vol 125 ◽  
pp. 355-358 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Sea Water ◽  
The Other ◽  
External Appearance ◽  
The Real ◽  
Real Nature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Waves

The Fourth Memoir, published in my Zoological Researches and Illustrations, No. III. page 69, &c., having first made known the real nature of the Cirripedes , the key of which remained concealed in their metamorphosis, it might have been expected that some naturalist favourably situated to investigate the oceanic tribe of these animals, would have been the first to make the same discovery in regard to these, and thereby complete their natural history. It was scarcely to be expected that the honour of this discovery also should be reserved for the author, fixed to one spot, where none of them naturally exist, and are but casually thrown upon our shores by the waves of the Atlantic, attached to pieces of wreck, or brought into port fixed to the bottoms of ships returning from distant voyages. Fortunately, however, two ships of this description came into this harbour (Cork), one from the Mediterranean, the other from North America, which, not being sheathed with copper, had their bot­toms literally covered with Barnacles of the three genera of Lepas , Cineras , and Otion ; and having persons employed expressly for the purpose, numbers of these were brought alive in sea water, amongst which were many with the ova in various stages of their progress, and some ready to hatch, which they eventually did in prodigious numbers, so as to enable him to add the proof of their being, like the Balani, natatory Crusta­cea in their first stage , but of a totally different facies and structure; a circumstance which determines the propriety of the separation of the Cirripedes into two tribes, and evinces the sagacity of Mr. MacLeay in being the first to indicate that these two tribes, the Balani and Lepades , were not so closely related as generally supposed. The larvæ of the Balani , described in Memoir IV. under the external appearance of the bivalve Monoculi ( Astracoda ), have a pair of pedunculated eyes, more numerous and more completely developed members, approximating to those of Cyclops , and of the perfect Triton ; while, in the present type, or Lepades , the larva resembles some­what that of the Cyclops , which Müller, mistaking for a perfect animal, named Amymone , and which can be shown to he common to a great many of the Entomostraca ; or the resemblance is still more striking to that of the Argulus Armiger of Latreille, which, in fact, is but an Amymone furnished with a tricuspidate shield at the back.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document