scholarly journals Exit the frog, enter the human: physiology and experimental psychology in nineteenth-century astronomy

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
JIMENA CANALES
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Physiology ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Sensory Transmission ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intense Debate

This paper deals with one of the first attempts to measure simple reactions in humans. The Swiss astronomer Adolph Hirsch investigated personal differences in the speed of sensory transmission in order to achieve accuracy in astronomy. His controversial results, however, started an intense debate among both physiologists and astronomers who disagreed on the nature of these differences. Were they due to different eyes or brains, or to differences in skill and education? Furthermore, they debated how to eliminate them. Some, for example, wanted to eliminate the observer, and prescribed the use of new technologies like the electro-chronograph or photography, while others believed in discipline and education. By debating the nature of these differences, astronomers and physiologists sketched both different conceptions of ‘man’ and different paths to objectivity. These diverse conceptions, moreover, were tied to current nineteenth-century debates, such as the benefits or disadvantages of railroads, telegraphy and the standardization of time and longitudes. By focusing on the debates surrounding the speed of sensory transmission, this paper reevaluates the history of astronomy, physiology and experimental psychology. Furthermore, in investigating astronomy's relation to the human sciences, it uncovers profound connections in the traditionally separate histories of objectivity and the body.L'heure sera distribuée dans les maisons,comme l'eau ou le gaz.Adolph Hirsch

Robert M. Young's Mind, Brain and Adaptation revisited

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Christopher Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Philosophy Department ◽  
History Of ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Scientific Ideas

Abstract Robert Maxwell Young's first book Mind, Brain and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century (1970), written from 1960 to 1965, still merits reading as a study of the naturalization of mind and its relation to social thought in Victorian Britain. I examine the book from two perspectives that give the volume its unique character: first, Young's interest in psychology, which he considered should be used to inform humane professional practices and be the basis of social reform; second, new approaches to the history of scientific ideas. I trace Young's intellectual interests to the Yale Philosophy Department, the Cambridge Department of Experimental Psychology and a new history and philosophy of science community. Although Young changed his political outlook and historiography radically after 1965, he always remained faithful to ideas about thought and practice described in Mind, Brain.

scholarly journals On the possible ellipticity of Saturn's ring

1924 ◽  
Vol 106 (739) ◽  
pp. 526-552 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Gravitational Attraction ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Small Oscillations ◽  
First Approximation ◽  
Elliptical Ring ◽  
Single Ring ◽  
History Of ◽  
Concentric Circles

Clerk Maxwell’s investigation into the constitution and stability of Saturn’s Ring was based upon the fundamental supposition that the rings were composed of particles arranged in concentric circles. Although the particles could perform small oscillations about their mean positions, it is evident that the outline of the ring would be to all appearances circular. A line in Clerke’s ‘Popular History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century’ (page 299) suggests that some observers have regarded the outline of the ring as elliptical. It is therefore of interest to enquire under what conditions an elliptical ring could exist. The ellipse is a more general form than a circle. If, therefore, it can be shown that an elliptic ring is possible, any explanation of the origin of the rings must take account of this fact. In this paper a single ring of particles is examined. The actual Ring of Saturn probably consists of numerous rings, one within the other. By their gravitational attraction, each will affect the motions of the others. As a first approximation, however, it is sufficient to consider the case of a single ring.

History of Research in Developmental Psychology

2013 ◽  
pp. 12-34
Author(s):  
W. Andrew Collins ◽  
Willard W. Hartup
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Psychological Development ◽  
First Century ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
History Of

This chapter summarizes the emergence and prominent features of a science of psychological development. Pioneering researchers established laboratories in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century to examine the significance of successive changes in the organism with the passage of time. American psychologists, many of whom had studied in the European laboratories, subsequently inaugurated similar efforts in the United States. Scientific theories and methods in the fledgling field were fostered by developments in experimental psychology, but also in physiology, embryology, ethology, and sociology. Moreover, organized efforts to provide information about development to parents, educators, and public policy specialists further propagated support for developmental science. The evolution of the field in its first century has provided a substantial platform for future developmental research.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alys Moody
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
The Body ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Human Potential ◽  
Aesthetic Autonomy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Failure ◽  
A Site

The introduction maps out the broad intellectual history of hunger, modernism, and aesthetic autonomy, sketching the prehistories that led to their convergence in the art of hunger. It sets out two competing definitions of aesthetic autonomy: a sociological definition, deriving from the writing of Pierre Bourdieu; and a philosophical one, deriving from the German philosophical tradition. It argues that the art of hunger represents a crisis in both definitions of aesthetic autonomy. At the same time, the art of hunger reflects a changing understanding of the body more broadly, as it becomes increasingly understood as a limit to human potential in the nineteenth century. The confluence of these failed modes of aesthetic autonomy and the new understanding of the body as a site of human failure and limitation, creates the conditions within which the art of hunger emerges as a modernist trope.

A HISTORY OF “RATIONALISM” IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOSHUA BENNETT
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Specific Term ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Intense Debate

“Rationalism” became the subject of intense debate in nineteenth-century Britain. This article asks why this was so, by focusing on the usage and implications of the term in contemporary argument. Rationalism was successively defined and redefined in ways that reached to the heart of Victorian epistemological and religious discussion. By treating rationalism as a contextually specific term, and examining how its implications changed between the 1820s and the early twentieth century, the article brings new perspectives to bear on the development of nineteenth-century freethought and countervailing religious apologetic. It underlines the importance of history, and constructions of intellectual lineage, as ways of establishing the relationship between rationality and religion in a progressively wider-ranging Victorian debate about the sources of knowledge and value.

Beyond the planets: early nineteenth-century studies of double stars

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Williams
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Solar System ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Double Stars ◽  
Stellar Astronomy ◽  
John Herschel ◽  
Major Break ◽  
History Of ◽  
Positional Astronomy

In 1837 the German-born astronomer F. G. W. Struve published his famous catalogue of double stars. For Struve this was the culmination of 12 years' detailed observation of a class of celestial objects lying exclusively beyond the solar system; for historians of astronomy it poses the problem of explaining why the study of double stars became a significant part of astronomical endeavour, as it did, during the 1820s and 1830s. For, although Struve's interest was extreme, it was shared to a lesser extent by several eminent contemporaries, including John Herschel, Friedrich Bessel, Johann Encke, James South and Félix Savary. Their combined efforts represented an important transition in astronomy: for the first time one of the emphases of the subject moved beyond the solar system to the so-called fixed stars. The question of the emergence of interest in double stars is of historical significance, therefore, as it is related to the problem of the origins of ‘stellar astronomy’. This essay is thus intended to offer an explanation of astronomers' interest in double stars, and to tackle the related question of whether this transition constituted a major break in the history of astronomy. Furthermore it is proposed that answers to these problems may be found by considering the practice of astronomy dominant during the first half of the nineteenth century. Astronomers in this period were overwhelmingly concerned with a refined form of positional astronomy. The problems they chose to solve were by and large related to the difficulties of the accurate reduction of observational data, and the compilation of reliable tables and star charts, which were then used as a background against which the motions of solar system objects were plotted. By assessing individuals' studies of double stars within this context it can be seen firstly that such studies were no more or less than specific examples of a general case, and secondly that the stars themselves were not usually of intrinsic interest. In general it was the positions of the stars on the

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