The physical interpretation of the wave theory of light

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank A. J. L. James

There existed essentially two theories of light during the early nineteenth century: the particulate theory and the wave theory. This we realise today is a gross over-simplification, since there were many varieties of each theory. But to the supporters of one theory the other theory had faults so fundamental that no distinction between varieties of the same theory was sufficient to placate opposition to that theory. This meant that opponents of either the wave or the particulate theory seldom, in their attacks, distinguished between different varieties of either theory.

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
THERESA LEVITT

Augustin Fresnel and François Arago are typically credited with jointly establishing the wave theory of light in early nineteenth-century France. Yet the two men, working in different traditions, brought to their collaboration vastly different conceptions of what light was and how it should be studied. This paper traces the work that went into co-ordinating these disparate approaches into a united front, as well as the dissolution of the alliance after 1821. Although the fruits of their alliance proved remarkably stable, in fact agreement between them was never more than partial.


2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
AMBROGIO A. CAIANI

ABSTRACTThe recent bicentennial commemorations of the Napoleonic empire have witnessed a proliferation of new studies. Scholars now possess much more sophisticated conceptual tools than in past decades with which to gauge the problems faced by French imperial administrators throughout Europe. Well-trodden concepts, like centre/periphery or collaboration/resistance, have been reinvigorated by more sophisticated understandings of how rulers and ruled interacted in the early nineteenth century. This article argues that, while much progress has been made in understanding problems of ‘resistance’, there is more to be said about the other side of the same coin, namely: ‘collaboration’. Using the micro/local history of a scandal in Napoleonic Bologna, this article wishes to reaffirm that collaboration was an active agent that shaped, and often shook, the French imperial project. The biggest problem remained that, despite ‘good intentions’, collaborators sometimes simply did not collaborate with each other. After all, imperial clients were determined to benefit from the experience of empire. The centre was often submerged by local petty squabbles. This article will use a specific micro-history in Bologna to highlight the extent to which Napoleonic empire builders had to thread a fine line between the impracticalities of direct control and the dangers of ‘going native’.


1972 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 239-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurus Lunn

Gallicanism - the name given to the general theory that the Church, especially the Church in France, is free from the jurisdiction of the pope, while remaining Roman and Catholic - is familiar to most historians. The existence of such a thing as Anglo-Gallicanism, on the other hand, seems scarcely credible. Post-Reformation English Catholics present the image of a persecuted and retiring group of people, who, in order to preserve their corporate identity, became more Italianate in their culture than the Italians and in their theology more papalist than the popes; and of the majority of English Catholics this was true. But throughout their history there runs a thin red line of dissent, which passes from the Appellant priests in the late sixteenth century, via Blackloism in the seventeenth, to Charles Butler, Joseph Berington and the Catholic Committee at the dawn of emancipation. Gallicanism, and perhaps its English counterpart, were given a death-blow by Napoleon’s application of papal authority to the French bishops. But Anglo-Gallicanism was an unconscionably long time dying, for at Downside in the early nineteenth century William Bernard Ullathorne, later bishop of Birmingham, was taught theology from Gallican textbooks. In this tradition a prominent part, in terms of impact and literary output, was played by another Benedictine, Thomas Preston, alias Roger Widdrington.


2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 177
Author(s):  
Rafael Chaves Santos

A primeira grande Expedição Científica Austríaca ao Brasil no início século XIX produziu, além da coleta de diversas espécies e peças de coleções antropológicas e etnográficas, vários relatos das experiências de seus participantes. Um destes, Johann Natterer, cuja permanência em nossas terras foi a mais demorada, não pode em vida concluir sua obra, mas deixou centenas de cartas que relatam suas experiências e vivências pelas regiões do Brasil. Seus textos, ainda pouco trabalhados no Brasil, são, neste artigo, analisados como prática social que busca evidenciar por meio da linguagem posições ideológicas de caráter eurocêntrico.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Europeus. Relatos. Linguagem. Índios. ABSTRACTThe first major Austrian Scientific Expedition to Brazil in early nineteenth century produced, in addition to collecting various species and parts of anthropological and ethnographic collections, many compilations of the experiences of their participants. One of these, Johann Natterer, whose permanence in our land was the most time consuming, could not complete his work in life time, but left hundreds of letters that described his knowledge and his experiences of life in the regions of Brazil. This article analyses his texts, which had not been yet studied in Brazil, as a social practice that seeks to demonstrate through language the Eurocentric ideological character.KEYWORDS: Europeans. Reports. Language. Indians.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-189
Author(s):  
Tim Hannigan

The “upas tree” is one of the most enduring European myths about Southeast Asia. Accounts of a tree so toxic that it renders the surrounding atmosphere deadly can first be identified in fourteenth-century journey narratives covering what is now Indonesia. But while most other such apocrypha vanished from later European accounts of the region, the upas myth remained prominent and in fact became progressively more elaborate and fantastical, culminating in a notorious hoax: the 1783 account of J. N. Foersch. This article examines the history of the development of the upas myth, and considers the divergent responses to Foersch’s hoax amongst scientists and colonial administrators on the one hand, and poets, playwrights, and artists on the other. In this it reveals a significant tension within the emerging “Orientalist” discourse about Southeast Asia in the early nineteenth century.


Author(s):  
Sverre Bagge

There is a continuous tradition of historical writing from the Middle Ages to the present day in all three of the Scandinavian kingdoms, as well as in Iceland, though admittedly it began later (not until the early fourteenth century) in Sweden than in the other countries. The works dating from the Middle Ages have already been discussed. Those of the Early Modern Period are of interest as evidence of learning and for an understanding of how “history” was viewed at the time, and also because they contain a number of documents from the Middle Ages whose originals have been lost. However, the beginning of modern scholarly historical writing is usually dated to the early nineteenth century, in Scandinavia as in the rest of Europe. The professionalization of history, which started in Germany, quickly spread to Scandinavia. Throughout Europe, this professionalization was related to a national revival that typically placed great emphasis on a nation’s medieval past....


1975 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 59-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry H. Bucher

The Mpongwe people of the Gabon estuary live today in the immediate area of Libreville, the capital city of the Gabon Republic. Libreville is built on Mpongwe ancestral lands, and its history is only a small and comparatively recent chapter in the longer story of the Mpongwe and their neighbors. In the nineteenth century the expression “les Gabonais” or “the Gaboon people” had only one meaning—the Mpongwe of the estuary who were the coastal trading aristocracy.The Mpongwe are only one of the six peoples belonging to the Myèné-speaking group of Gabon. The other five are the Orungu, Nkomi, Galoa, Adyumba, and Enenga. Only the Mpongwe are patrilineal. Myèné is purely a linguistic classification, a subdivision of the Bantu language. All six of these societies fit into a circle whose circumference includes the three largest cities in Gabon today—Libreville, Port Gentil (formerly Cape Lopez), and Lambaréné (Map 1). From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, Myèné was the coastal lingua franca between the southern Cameroun and Cabinda. The Myèné societies in general, and the Mpongwe in particular, have played a key role in Gabon's past, and continue to be an influential minority in modern Gabon. In the early nineteenth century, and for an unknown previous period, the closest non-Myèné neighbors of the Mpongwe were the Benga and the related societies to the north, and the Shekiani and Bakélé to the east. The Shekiani were the couriers in the Mpongwe trade with the Bakélé and other interior societies.


Author(s):  
Peter Wothers

Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848), discoverer of the elements selenium, thorium, cerium, and silicon and deviser of the chemical symbols we use today, was one of the last in a long list of Swedish mineralogists and chemists active during the eighteenth century. Berzelius himself regarded one of his predecessors, Axel Fredrik Cronstedt (1722–65), as the founder of chemical mineralogy. We met Cronstedt in Chapter 2 as the discoverer of the element nickel, isolated from the ore kupfernickel. But another of Cronstedt’s achievements was perhaps of even greater significance: his development of a classification of minerals based not on their physical appearances, as had been common up to this time, but on their chemical compositions. He first published his scheme anonymously in Swedish in 1758, but it was later translated into English as An Essay towards a System of Mineralogy. Cronstedt recognized four general classes of minerals: earths, bitumens, salts, and metals. As their name suggests, the bitumens were flammable substances that might dissolve in oil but not in water. The main difference between the salts and the earths was that the former, which included the ‘alcaline mineral salt’ natron, could be dissolved in water and recrystallized from it. The earths he defined as ‘those substances which are not ductile, are mostly indissoluble in water or oil, and preserve their constitution in a strong heat’. Cronstedt initially recognized nine different classes of earth. By the time of Torbern Bergman (1735–84), these had been reduced to five which ‘cannot be derived from each other or from anything simpler’. Lavoisier and his collaborators included these five in their great work on nomenclature even though they suspected that, like soda and potash, they were most likely not simple substances, but species that contained new metals. In the 1788 English translation of the nomenclature these were called silice, alumina, barytes, lime, and magnesia. The first two eventually, in the early nineteenth century, yielded the elements silicon and aluminium. The word ‘silicon’ derives from the Latin ‘silex’ (meaning ‘flint’—a form of silicon dioxide), with the ending ‘-on’ reflecting its resemblance to the other non-metals carbon and boron.


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