Spectroscopy and the Elements in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Work of Sir William Crookes

1973 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 400-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. DeKosky
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chemical Element ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of

Two imposing related problems confronted the chemical spectroscopist of the late nineteenth century. First, he lacked a criterion for judging the validity of claims for elemental discoveries; indeed, he possessed no satisfactory operational definition of the chemical element. Secondly, he felt the need for correlating the spectra of the elements to a conception of their ultimate constitution.

DELIGHTFUL COXCOMBS TO INDUSTRIOUS MEN: FASHIONABLE POLITICS IN CECIL AND PENDENNIS

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Nicolay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class A ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Trade Office

THOMAS CARLYLE’S CONTEMPTUOUS DESCRIPTION of the dandy as “a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office, and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes” (313) has survived as the best-known definition of dandyism, which is generally equated with the foppery of eighteenth-century beaux and late nineteenth-century aesthetes. Actually, however, George Brummell (1778–1840), the primary architect of dandyism, developed not only a style of dress, but also a mode of behavior and style of wit that opposed ostentation. Brummell insisted that he was completely self-made, and his audacious self-transformation served as an example for both parvenus and dissatisfied nobles: the bourgeois might achieve upward mobility by distinguishing himself from his peers, and the noble could bolster his faltering status while retaining illusions of exclusivity. Aristocrats like Byron, Bulwer, and Wellington might effortlessly cultivate themselves and indulge their taste for luxury, while at the same time ambitious social climbers like Brummell, Disraeli, and Dickens might employ the codes of dandyism in order to establish places for themselves in the urban world. Thus, dandyism served as a nexus for the declining aristocratic elite and the rising middle class, a site where each was transformed by the dialectic interplay of aristocratic and individualistic ideals.

Animism

Religion ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 23-29
Author(s):  
David Chidester
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Basic Definition ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of Religion ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter examines the emergence of a category, “belief in spiritual beings,” which drove certain “intellectualist” assumptions about the essence, origin, and persistence of religion. Like many terms in the study of religion in Europe during the late nineteenth century, animism arose through a global mediation in which an imperial theorist, in this case the father of anthropology, E. B. Tylor, relied on colonial middlemen, such as missionaries, travelers, and administrators, for evidence about indigenous people all over the world. Among other colonial sources, E. B. Tylor relied on the Anglican missionary Henry Callaway for data about Zulu people in South Africa. Drawing on Callaway’s reports about Zulu dreaming and sneezing, Tylor distilled his basic definition of religion as belief in pervading and invading spirits. Against a broad imperial and colonial background, this chapter explores the historical emergence and ongoing consequences of the category animism in the study of religion.

Coming Home: The Personal Basis of Simon Dubnow's Ideology

AJS Review ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 283-301
Author(s):  
Robert M. Seltzer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Biographical Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jewish Historian ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Literary Output

In the mid-1930s, when the eminent Jewish historian Simon Dubnow began to publish his autobiography, he gave it the formidable title The Book of Life: Reminiscences and Reflections, Material for the History of My Time. Drawing not only on his memory, but on copious diaries and a prodigious literary output going back to the 1880s, Dubnow traced his journey from shtetl Judaism to Jewish nationalism—a journey typical (onemight almost say prototypical) of the late-nineteenth-century Russian Jewish intellectual's search for a new definition of himself as Jew and modern man. The substance of Dubnow's Book of Life frees the title from pretentiousness; more than a mere compilation, much of the autobiography (especially the first volume and a half) was an act of synthesis and integratsiia dushi (“self-integration”), two of Dubnow's favorite terms. My aim in this paper is to reflect anew on the process of Dubnow's self-integration, bridging the gap between a purely biographical approach and a purely ideological one in order to show how a distinctive nationalist stance crystallized out of Dubnow's personal growth. Nationalism was a hard-won, by no means self-evident solution to an overlapping sequence of emotional and intellectual dilemmas. Dubnow provides us with a picture of the groping that this self-transformation entailed, a picture that can be supplemented, and to a certain extent revised, by listening for resonances between life and thought undetected by Dubnow himself.

Celebrating the Nation: 12 October, from ‘Day of the Race’ to Spanish National Day

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 731-763 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcela García Sebastiani ◽  
David Marcilhacy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Political History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
National State ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Catholic Tradition

This article is a study of the national holiday of 12 October, one of the most long-lasting and least transitory of the symbolic components of Spanish nationalism. Transnational in nature, this celebration of Spain’s existence constitutes an exception among similar national holidays, in that it is based upon the country’s role in the Americas and nostalgia for empire as founding elements of national identity. By analysing the changing ways in which this anniversary was celebrated in the course of the twentieth century, in rituals and language, the article highlights both the different imaginaries that were evoked and the roles played by particular actors and institutions in different stages of the construction of the national state and the definition of the regional and local identities of which it is composed. Our analysis of the progress of this celebration, from its inception in the late nineteenth century to the present day, as first Fiesta de la Raza, then Día de la Hispanidad and now just ‘National Day’, suggests that its durability, which has been maintained for nearly a century, stems from the notably ductile nature of the myths associated with it. Adaptable to regimes and political challenges of varied kinds, this commemoration melds together the inheritance of liberalism, the national-Catholic tradition and ‘regionalized nationalism’, all of which have been key elements in Spanish political history in the twentieth century.

scholarly journals Husserl’s Early Concept of Metaphysics As the Ultimate Science of Reality

Phainomenon ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-68
Author(s):  
Emiliano Trizio
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Transcendental Phenomenology ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Theoretical Issue ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Preliminary Step ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract This article reconstructs the development of Husserl’s definition of metaphysics as the ultimate science of reality in the courses and lectures written up to the year 1905. The analysis of these texts casts light on Husserl’s philosophical self-understanding in the wider context of late Nineteenth Century German philosophy as well as on the fundamental role that metaphysical interests played in the development of his thought from its earliest stage. A particular attention is devoted to Husserl’s early views about the relation between the theory of knowledge and metaphysics, whose analysis is a necessary preliminary step to address the theoretical issue of the relation between transcendental phenomenology and metaphysics.

scholarly journals V.I. Vernadskii and the development of biogeochemical understandings of the biosphere, c.1880s–1968

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN D. OLDFIELD ◽  
DENIS J.B. SHAW
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Positive Engagement

AbstractGeneral notions of the biosphere are widely recognized and form important elements of contemporary debate concerning global environmental change, helping to focus attention on the complex interactions that characterize the Earth's natural systems. At the same time, there is continued uncertainty over the precise definition of the concept allied to a relatively limited critique of its early development, which was linked closely to advances in the natural sciences during the late nineteenth century and particularly, it is argued here, to the emergence of biogeochemistry. In the light of this, the principal aim of the paper is to explore the development and subsequent dissemination of biogeochemical renderings of the biosphere concept, focusing primarily on the work of the Russian biogeochemist Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadskii (1863–1945). The paper identifies four key moments which, it is argued, help to explain the development and subsequent dissemination of a biogeochemical understanding of the biosphere. First, we draw attention to the particularities of St Petersburg's natural-science community during the late nineteenth century, arguing that this was instrumental in providing the basis for Vernadskii's future work related to the biosphere. Second, we consider the ways in which Vernadskii's ideas concerning the biosphere were able to move to the West during the first half of the twentieth century with specific reference to his links with the French scientists Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Edouard Le Roy, and the US-based ecologist George Evelyn Hutchinson. Third, we reflect more purposefully on matters of reception and, in particular, the emergence of a set of circumstances within Western ecological science after 1945, which encouraged a positive engagement with biogeochemical understandings of the biosphere. Finally, we examine the 1968 UNESCO-sponsored Biosphere Conference, which represented the first time the biosphere concept was employed at the international level. Furthermore, this event was in many ways a high point for a specifically biogeochemical approach, with the subsequent popularization of the biosphere concept during the course of the 1970s helping to broaden the discourse markedly.

Fetishism Revisited: Kongo Nkisi in Sociological Perspective

Africa ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wyatt MacGaffey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Deceased Person ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphFetishism, a word much in vogue in late nineteenth century anthropology, no longer appears in serious scholarly use, except among art historians, psychoanalysts, and Marxist economists. Tylor, the most influential voice in the definition of fetishism, regarded it as a development of animism; fetishism was ‘the doctrine of spirits embodied in, or attached to, or conveying influence through, certain material objects. Fetishism will be taken as including the worship of ‘stocks and stones’ and thence it passes by an imperceptible gradation into Idolatry’ (Tylor 1874:II:144). Tylor went on to speculate that primitive man originally imagined the soul of a deceased person to inhabit some relic such as a bone; this idea once established, it evolved into a propensity to associate any unusual object with a spirit. If the spirit, with its capacity for action, were embodied in an object specially made to represent its character, the ethnographer would recognise an Idol.

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