Agnes Arber, historian of botany and Darwinian sceptic

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-523
Author(s):  
Vittoria Feola
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Plant Morphology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Academic Standards ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
History Of Botany ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

This essay aims to reappraise Agnes Arber's contribution to the history of science with reference to her work in the history of botany and biology. Both her first and her last books (Herbals, 1912; The Mind and the Eye, 1954) are classics: the former in the history of botany, the latter in that of biology. As such, they are still cited today, albeit with increasing criticism. Her very last book was rejected by Cambridge University Press because it did not meet the publisher's academic standards – we shall return to it in due course. Despite Kathryn Packer's two essays about Arber's life in context, much remains to be done toward a just appreciation of her research. We need such a reappraisal in order to avoid anachronistic criticisms of her contributions to the historiography of botany, or, on the other hand, uncritical applause for her studies in plant morphology.

scholarly journals The Impact of Religious Motivation in the Emergence of Arabic Rhetoric A Reading in the Era of Composition to Independent Authorship (English Abstract)

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-223
Author(s):  
Wael Omar Alomari Wael Omar Alomari
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
English Abstract ◽  
Religious Motivation ◽  
Religious Influence ◽  
Multiple Contexts ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
Arabic Rhetoric ◽  
The Impact

The roots of the rhetorical lesson grew in a fertile religious land. They characterized its rhetoric from the rhetoric of the rest of the nations as it was connected with the Qur’anic text. However, the religious stream did not have only one subject and one goal. It produced multiple contexts that refined the teachings of the rhetorical lesson later on. This diversity was a fertile tool for Arabic eloquence. The research sought to discuss the details of the roots, to extract the courses of religious influence in the emergence of Arabic rhetoric. The research has gone beyond the oral news and stories to begin with the written diaries, in search of the author’s motivations and his aims, and of the milestones that contributed to the reading of the rhetorical lesson. It emanated from the signs of the composition, so the limits of the research stopped at the beginning of the independent composition of Arabic rhetoric and moved to a stage approaching the methodology. The research revealed three courses that stemmed from the religious influence which were related to language. These three courses are analysis, interpretation and explanation. They were tools that were used in the analysis that aimed to understand the Qura’nic text in order to transfer it from language to practice. The interpretation, on the other hand, raised the question of compatibility between language and belief. The explanation tried to deal with the issue of miracles and clarifying its features. The re-reading of the history of science is an area that can research, re-ask the question, and disassociate its relations, to understand the process of science, and the impact of their tributaries on their concepts. This is what researchers can examine in the rest of the tributaries that have fueled the rhetorical lesson.

Pippin on Hegel

1989 ◽  
Vol 10 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Robert Stern
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
History Of ◽  
Absolute Knowledge

Ever since Plato coined the metaphor, it has been tempting to treat the history of philosophy as a series of battles between Gods and Giants, as a ‘clash of argument’ between idealists and materialists, rationalists and naturalists, and idealists and realists. Many commentators, provoked by Hegel's combative remarks, have been led to see the Kant-Hegel relation in this way; and yet it has not always been easy to determine either what the issue between these two antagonists really is, or indeed which of them is the Giant and which the God. Robert Pippin, in his new book, Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, pp. xii + 327, hb £30.00, pb £10.95) casts new light on the nature of the struggle, and makes clear what was at stake: a non-rationalist, non-metaphysical answer to the sceptic, and with it absolute knowledge. Pippin's densely written but engrossing book provides the focus of discussion for this issue of the Bulletin. The contributions by H.S. Harris and Terry Pinkard offer critical comments on Pippin's approach to Hegel, and they are followed with a response by Pippin himself. These pieces were originally presented as a meeting of the Western APA, and assume an acquaintance with Pippin's argument, which I will try to outline in what follows. Like many recent commentators, Pippin begins by insisting that we take seriously Hegel's claim to have ‘completed’ Kant, and so rejects any metaphysical, rationalist readng of Hegel. On the other hand, Pippin wants to understand Hegel's claim to have found a form of idealism that answers Kant's transcendental scepticism regarding the ‘thing-in-itself’, without collapsing back into rationalism.

Debates in transnational and science studies: a defence and illustration of the virtues of intellectual tolerance

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
DOMINIQUE PESTRE
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Transnational Relations ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

AbstractWhen considering the works produced in history of science and transnational history, one is struck by the wide range of issues covered, the profusion of ideas and analyses, the richness and variety of what is proposed. On the other hand, one is also struck by the presence of rather repetitive methodological professions of faith, of declarations of intent about categories and rules that are quite stable over time. This article considers in turn both issues. First, what we have learned in substantial terms, what these historiographical reassessments about science and transnational relations teach us, what has been displaced and what is currently being opened. In the second part, the paper considers what is at stake in these preliminary statements of principle. The article defends the idea that we are facing two major interpretative corpuses that both do count and are heuristically productive, that in practice both are often mixed by historians – but that it is intellectually and politically decisive to consider finely the epistemologies, ontologies and postures that are offered.

scholarly journals História da ciência, práticas discursivas e comunicação didática: uma breve reflexão

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 435-441
Author(s):  
José M.C. Belo
Keyword(s):  
Science Teaching ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Scientific Activity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Keywords History Of Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

Resumo De que falamos quando pretendemos falar da história da ciência no ensino? Falamos do ensino da(s) ciência(s)? Falamos do ensino da história da ciência? Falamos de ambos? Se falamos do ensino de história da ciência, então poderíamos falar de todas as disciplinas (unidades curriculares) que constituem o currículo porque, de algum modo, a ciência – a sua história – é transversal a todas. Por outro lado, se falamos da história da ciência como adjuvante do ensino das ciências - do lugar que a história da ciência deve ocupar no quadro do ensino das ciências - então estaremos a falar de algo bem diferente que tem merecidamente ocupado muitos dos que se preocupam com estas questões. Pela nossa parte, na necessariamente breve reflexão que vamos efetuar, tentaremos pôr em relevo, por um lado, a importância do conhecimento do desenvolvimento histórico da atividade científica como elemento agregador e motivador para todos os estudantes de ciências, ao mesmo tempo que evidenciaremos o modo como o discurso didático está carregado de elementos causadores de ruído no processo de comunicação didática. Palavras-chave: história da ciência; comunicação didática; paradigmas Abstract What do we talk about when we want to talk about the history of science in education? Are we talking about science(s) teaching? Are we talking about the teaching of the history of science? Are we talking about both? If we talk about the teaching of the history of science, then we could speak of all the disciplines (curricular units) that constitute the curriculum because, in some way, science - its history - is transversal to all of them. On the other hand, if we speak of the history of science as an adjunct to science teaching - the place that history of science must occupy in science teaching - then we are talking about something quite different that has deservedly occupied many of those who care about these issues. On our part, in the necessarily brief reflection that we are going to make, we will try to highlight, on the one hand, the importance of the knowledge of the historical development of scientific activity as an aggregator and motivator for all students of science, and, at the same time, we will try to show the way as the didactic discourse is loaded with elements that cause noise in the process of didactic communication. Keywords: history of science; didactic communication; paradigms

The Attempt to Conceive the Absolute As A Spiritual Life

Philosophy ◽  
1927 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 137-152
Author(s):  
Harold H. Joachim
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Universe

§ 1. “To the mind of the philosopher”, according to Plato,1 “there belongs a vision of all time and all being"; and certainly many of the great thinkers have made it their business to speculate about the omnitudo realitatis or the ens realissimum—about the universe as a whole and in its wholeness, or about that which is supremely real—in short (to use the most convenient term) about ‘ the Absolute ‘. It may be (as the history of philosophical speculation suggests) that this interest in the Whole lies at the heart of all genuine philosophy, giving to it its distinctive inspiration and character. It may be, on the other hand, that it is a misdirected solicitude—an anxiety to solve the inherently insoluble. The Absolute, we shall perhaps be told, is a vox nihili—a name for that which, being nothing, has no attributes ; or we, at least, can never hope to characterize it. All our available predicates, being drawn of necessity from a limited field, must ‘ come short‘must prove inadequate for so immense and so august a subject.

scholarly journals The Struggle for Objectivity: Gramsci’s Historical-Political Vistas on Science against the Background of Lenin’s Epistemology

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-49
Author(s):  
Pietro Daniel Omodeo
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
The Other ◽  
International Congress ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ideological Dimension ◽  
The One ◽  
Science Epistemology

AbstractThis contribution interprets the intertwined issues of science, epistemology, society, and politics in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks as a culturalist approach to science that does not renounce objectivity. Gramsci particularly criticized the scientist positions taken by the Bolshevik leader Nikolai Bukharin in Historical Materialism (1921) and the conference communication he delivered at the International Congress of History of Science and Technology in London in 1931. Gramsci did not avoid, at least implicitly, engaging with the theses of Lenin’s Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1909). Gramsci’s reception of these Russian positions was twofold: on the one hand, he agreed with the centrality of praxis (and politics) for a correct assessment of the meaning of epistemological positions; on the other hand, he disagreed with the reduction of the problem of epistemology to the dichotomy of materialism and idealism at the expense of any consideration of the ideological dimension of science.

Beérkezett könyvek

2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-770
Author(s):  
Csaba Pléh
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
New Science ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Oxford University Press

Danziger, Kurt: Marking the mind. A history of memory . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008Farkas, Katalin: The subject’s point of view. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008MosoninéFriedJudités TolnaiMárton(szerk.): Tudomány és politika. Typotex, Budapest, 2008Iacobini, Marco: Mirroring people. The new science of how we connect with others. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2008Changeux, Jean-Pierre. Du vrai, du beau, du bien.Une nouvelle approche neuronale. Odile Jacob, PárizsGazzaniga_n

George Gabriel Stokes

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fluid Dynamics ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Mathematical Analysis ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Natural Philosophers

George Gabriel Stokes was one of the most significant mathematicians and natural philosophers of the nineteenth century. Serving as Lucasian professor at Cambridge he made wide-ranging contributions to optics, fluid dynamics and mathematical analysis. As Secretary of the Royal Society he played a major role in the direction of British science acting as both a sounding board and a gatekeeper. Outside his own area he was a distinguished public servant and MP for Cambridge University. He was keenly interested in the relation between science and religion and wrote extensively on the matter. This edited collection of essays brings together experts in mathematics, physics and the history of science to cover the many facets of Stokes’s life in a scholarly but accessible way.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document