Social mobility and scientific change: Stephen Gray's contribution to electrical research

1990 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ben-Chaim
Keyword(s):  
Electrical Conductivity ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Scientific Change ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Radical Transformation

The concept of electrical conductivity, or, as initially coined by Stephen Gray (1666–1736), ‘electrical communication’, has always been assigned an important role in the history of electrical research. Some thirty-five years after Gray's ‘electrical communication’ acquired wide attention, Priestley employed the concept of conductivity to define physical reality, thus giving a privileged position to the science he himself endeavoured to cultivate. As he argued in the introduction to The History and Present State of Electricity (1767), ‘the electrical fluid is no local, or occasional agent in the theatre of the world. Late discoveries show that its presence and effects are every where … It is not, like magnetism, confined to one kind of bodies, but every thing we know is a conductor or nonconductor of electricity’. Contemporary historians, for example, Heilbron, Home and Hackmann, link the concept of conductivity to a radical transformation of electrical research which pertained to its mode of organization and the definition of its subject-matter, and which culminated in its emergence as a distinctive branch of eighteenth-century ‘experimental philosophy’.

An Indian It-Narrative and the Problem of Circulation: Reconsidering a Useful Concept for Literary Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-396
Author(s):  
James Mulholland
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Cultural Ideal ◽  
Publication History ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract For decades scholars have relied on the concept of circulation to explain the operation of texts and to animate the significance of literary studies. Its overuse has elided differences in the virtual relationships created by reading and has blurred empirical details about the production and consumption of texts. Circulation has been turned into a “widespread cultural ideal” and remains one of the least examined stipulations of literary study. For these reasons, reconsidering its role in literary study is essential. The eighteenth century was a vital period for the creation of a modern definition of circulation, so this essay returns to one especially pertinent case from that period, Helenus Scott’s it-narrative The Adventures of a Rupee (1782), which describes the movements of a rupee coin in the world economy. Attending to the linguistic form and publication history of Scott’s novel offers a model of circulation that emphasizes coagulation and stasis rather than liquidity, mobility, and flows. This model explains how texts repeat while altering preexisting forms of circulation, which has consequences for understanding how reading publics arise and reproduce themselves.

Evangelicals and Unevangelicals: The Contested History of a Word, 1500–1950

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linford D. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
American History ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Evangelical Identity ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract“Not Evangelical”! and who is this,With serpent’s tongue, that dares the sentence hiss?1—Day K. Lee, Universalist minister, 1841Recent academic use of the word “evangelical” in American history has been surprisingly static. Drawing upon scholars of “evangelicalism,” historians have been tied to an “essentialist,” or doctrinal, definition of evangelicalism that stretches unbroken from the early eighteenth century to the present. Such ahistorical readings, however, obscure a far more interesting and complex reality. This essay argues that from the Protestant Reformation through the early twentieth century, to be “evangelical” was most often a Protestant-inflected way of being in the world, which at times could have multiple, changing, and contested doctrinal associations. It was a flexible and dynamic idiom, intended to communicate a relative biblical authenticity by those who wielded it. In particular, this essay seeks to recover three overlooked dimensions of the use of the word “evangelical”: first, the firmly Protestant and even anti-Catholic implication of the term that spanned the history of Protestantism from the 1520s to the twentieth century; second, the relative authenticity, “true-Christian” usage, which contained within it a strong “primitivist” impulse with reference to New Testament Christianity; and third, the contested nature of the word, particularly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when “evangelical” identity supposedly started to become more recognizable.

‹ Rococo › : du jargon à la catégorie de style

2017 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 474-487
Author(s):  
Marie-Pauline Martin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Louis Xv ◽  
Objective Existence

Abstract Today there is a consensus on the definition of the term ‘rococo’: it designates a style both particular and homogeneous, artistically related to the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. But we must not forget that in its primitive formulations, the rococo has no objective existence. As a witty, sneering, and impertinent word, it can adapt itself to the most varied discourses and needs, far beyond references to the eighteenth century. Its malleability guarantees its sparkling success in different languages, but also its highly contradictory uses. By tracing the genealogy of the word ‘rococo’, this article will show that the association of the term with the century of Louis XV is a form of historical discrimination that still prevails widely in the history of the art of the Enlightenment.

scholarly journals Lingvo-Pedagogical Understanding of the Concepts of “Discourse Competence” and “Patriotic Discourse”

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1839-1844
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Discourse Competence ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The University ◽  
Liberal Culture

The article attempts to comprehend the essence and possibility of forming discourse competence among foreign and Russian students with simultaneous immersion in patriotic discourse. It is highlighted that the addition of the humanitarian series of “History of Civilizations” and “Features of Russian Civilization” to the educational process at the university creates the necessary pedagogical conditions for organizing a special linguo-ethno-cultural environment that forms active social interaction of authors within the framework of the medical and patriotic linguistic scenario. The authors of the article conducted a semantic and historical analysis of interpretations of the concept of “patriotism” that were studied from the point of view of traditional and liberal culture. The article presents the results of a socio-pedagogical study of students' perceptions of this concept. The article describes various theoretical and methodological approaches to the definition of the concepts of “discourse” and “discursive picture of the world” as well as psycholinguistic features of the method of semantic differential. Special attention in the article is paid to the typologies of discourse presented in the scientific literature. The authors of the article present the principle of genre and the principle of thematic correlation as the basis for distinguishing between types of discourse and highlight differences in language and discursive pictures of the world. The tasks of educators is to form not only purely medical discursive competence, but also to immerse the listener in “correctly” interpreted picture, saturated with verbal patterns that allow to create statements of patriotic content.

scholarly journals A Taxonomy for the Social Agents of Scientific Change

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 55-62
Author(s):  
Nicholas Overgaard
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
Epistemic Communities ◽  
Scientific Change ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
Social Agents ◽  
Social Agent ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of

Although we accept that a scientific mosaic is a set of theories and methods accepted and employed by a scientific community, scientific community currently lacks a proper definition in scientonomy. In this paper, I will outline a basic taxonomy for the bearers of a mosaic, i.e. the social agents of scientific change. I begin by differentiating between accidental group and community through the respective absence and presence of a collective intentionality. I then identify two subtypes of community: the epistemic community that has a collective intentionality to know the world, and the non-epistemic community that does not have such a collective intentionality. I note that both epistemic and non-epistemic communities might bear mosaics, but that epistemic communities are the intended social agents of scientific change because their main collective intentionality is to know the world and, in effect, to change their mosaics. I conclude my paper by arguing we are not currently in a position to properly define scientific community per se because of the risk of confusing pseudoscientific communities with scientific communities. However, I propose that we can for now rely on the definition of epistemic community as the proper social agent of scientific change.Suggested Modifications[Sciento-2017-0012]: Accept the following taxonomy of group, accidental group, and community:Group ≡ two or more people who share any characteristic.Accidental group ≡ a group that does not have a collective intentionality.Community ≡ a group that has a collective intentionality. [Sciento-2017-0013]: Provided that the preceding modification [Sciento-2017-0012] is accepted, accept that communities can consist of other communities.[Sciento-2017-0014]: Provided that modification [Sciento-2017-0012] is accepted, accept the following definitions of epistemic community and non-epistemic community as subtypes of community:Epistemic community ≡ a community that has a collective intentionality to know the world.Non-epistemic community ≡ a community that does not have a collective intentionality to know the world.[Sciento-2017-0015]: Provideed that modification [Sciento-2017-0013] and [Sciento-2017-0014] are accepted, accept that a non-epistemic community can consist of epistemic communities.

Curatorial Expeditions: The Ramallah Safari

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Sherwell
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
Stuart Hall ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

The last twenty-five years have witnessed significant transformation in the geopolitics of Palestinian art.[2] From the outset, we need to consider a definition of Palestinian art by recognizing that it is not art that is specifically created in one place, but that, owing to the history of dispossession and diaspora, Palestinian artists can be found all over the world. Therefore, Palestinian art necessarily starts from multiple sites of enunciation and is inevitably influenced by site and location. As Stuart Hall suggests, “identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, position ourselves within, the narratives of the past.”[3] For the purposes of this paper, I will mainly be focusing on the art of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, while touching on the production of artists based in various other locations around the globe. I will first provide some context to the development of art practices, before specifically going on to speak about curatorial practices in relation to how the work of Palestinian artists is curated by international curators.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole von Germeten
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
First Century ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

The conclusion surveys how in nineteenth-century Mexico, Europe, and regions around the world under European colonial rule, sex work took place in an environment of increasing government intervention, a phase in the history of sexuality that extends into the twenty-first century. The concern about disease control took on a more scientific, sanitary tone in the eighteenth century. This discourse remained critical to sex work law, as it does to the present day. Through prolific regulations, scientific studies, works of literature, and statements made by sex workers themselves, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw an enormous increase in the archiving and inscribing of women who sold sex. But their roles remained the same: either pathetic victims (usually of non-whites or non-Christians or other feared populations), lascivious and scandalous disturbers of the peace, or dehumanized and horrific threats to public health. Imperialism and international conceptions of race/gender difference led to increasing government regulation in locations as dispersed as the disappearing Spanish American viceroyalties, extending outwards to Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

Reading Henry Maundrell’s Sacred Geography in Eighteenth-Century England and Germany

2019 ◽  
pp. 210-226
Author(s):  
Simon Mills
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Sacred Geography ◽  
History Of

This chapter explains the remarkable popularity of Henry Maundrell’s A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter AD 1697 (1703). It argues that Maundrell’s eye-witness reportage of his travels in the Holy Land provided the book’s readers with a storehouse of geographical observations and descriptions of eastern customs with which they could recreate imaginatively the world of the Scriptures. Tracing the book’s use by editors, commentators, translators, and paraphrasts, it argues that Maundrell was most often put to work in defence of the Bible against attacks on its claims to truth. Yet in the hands of Maundrell’s late eighteenth-century German translator, the naturalist and historicist tendencies inherent in his account were brought into sharper focus; ‘sacred geography’ was transformed into a history of biblical culture.

Samuel Wesley and the Missa De Spiritu Sancto

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-319
Author(s):  
Philip Olleson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Performing Edition ◽  
Subsequent Performance ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
World Premiere

A good deal of attention has been paid in recent years to the relationships between Methodists and Catholics in England in the eighteenth century and, in particular, to John Wesley’s own dealings with Catholics and Catholicism. This article examines a link with Catholicism at the very heart of Methodism’s first family: the involvement of Samuel Wesley (1766–1837), the younger of the two musician sons of Charles Wesley, and the nephew of John. As will be seen below, Wesley converted in 1784, marking the occasion by composing an elaborate setting of the Ordinary of the Mass (the Missa de Spiritu Sancto) which he sent to Pope Pius VI. This article discusses the background to the composition of the Mass, its musical content, and the subsequent history of its autograph score. It is prompted by the publication of a performing edition of the work and by a subsequent performance (almost certainly the world première) in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, on 10 September 1997, which was recorded and later broadcast on both Irish and British radio.

Part III Regimes and Doctrines, Ch.35 Theorizing Free Trade

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orford Anne
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Market Distortion ◽  
Historical Trajectory

This chapter re-examines the history of free trade and its relationship to international law. It locates contemporary trade agreements within a larger story about the relation between the state, the market, and the social; explores why it is useful to place current trade agreements within a longer historical trajectory; offers a brief narrative of how the concept of free trade has moved across a two-hundred-year period since the late eighteenth century; and concludes that concepts such as free trade (and related concepts such as discrimination, market distortion, protection, and subsidies) are the product of political struggles over particular ways of understanding the world, justifying entitlements to resources, explaining why some people should profit from the labour of others, and legitimizing the exercise of power.

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