scholarly journals The Society of Astrologers (c.1647–1684): sermons, feasts and the resuscitation of astrology in seventeenth-century London

Author(s):  
Michelle Pfeffer

Abstract Before the Royal Society there was the Society of Astrologers (c.1647–1684), a group of around forty practitioners who met in London to enjoy lavish feasts, listen to sermons and exchange instruments and manuscripts. This article, drawing on untapped archival material, offers the first full account of this overlooked group. Convinced that astrology had been misunderstood by the professors who refused to teach it and the preachers who railed against it, the Society of Astrologers sought to democratize and legitimize their art. In contrast to the received view of seventeenth-century London astrologers, which emphasizes their bitter interrelationships, this article draws attention instead to their endeavours to mount a united front in defence of astrology. The article locates the society's attempts to promote astrological literacy within broader contemporary programmes to encourage mathematical education. Unlike other mathematical arts, however, astrology's religious credibility was an area of serious concern. The society therefore commissioned the delivery and publication of apologetic sermons that justified astrology on the basis of its sacred history. In this context, the legitimacy of astrology was more a religious than a scientific question. The society's public relations campaign ultimately failed, however, and its members disbanded in the mid-1680s. Not only were they mounting a rearguard action, but also they built their campaign on out-of-date historical arguments.

Trevor I. Williams, Howard Florey - penicillin and after . Oxford University Press, 1984. Pp. xiii + 404. £22.50. ISBN 0-19-858173-4. Soon after Florey’s death in 1978 there appeared an admirable biography by Gwyn Macfarlane ( Howard Florey - the making of a great scientist , Oxford, 1979). It gives a full account of Florey’s early life in Australia and England including the discovery and exploitation of penicillin, with shorter accounts of his later activities in relation to the creation of the Australian National University, his period as President of the Royal Society and his last post as Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford.


1898 ◽  
Vol 62 (379-387) ◽  
pp. 376-385 ◽  

On a previous occasion I gave some boiling points of salt solutions under atmospheric pressure. As the dimensions of that abstract made a full account of the experimental method impossible, I have been given this opportunity, by the courtesy of the Council of the Royal Society, of describing the apparatus and procedure by which those results were obtained.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (84) ◽  
pp. 99-112
Author(s):  
Sascha Brünig

Abstract In the mid-1970s, the dangers associated with nuclear power moved to the center of risk debates in Germany. Following the reactor accident at Three Mile Island (1979) and the Chernobyl disaster (1986), the West German nuclear industry’s business prospects severely deteriorated. How did the nuclear industry perceive and confront the challenge of nuclear skepticism? And how did this emerging challenge alter the perceived future of nuclear technology in the Federal Republic and beyond? The article argues that the nuclear industry did not passively accept the »depletion of utopian energies« (J. Habermas) to which the peaceful use of the atom was subjected. Instead, the industry worked to create new (utopian) prospects for nuclear power. The industry’s public relations campaign positioned nuclear power in two interrelated fields of insecurity: the decline of industrial society and environmental crises. Both threats, ran the argument put forth by nuclear proponents, could only be combatted by relying on nuclear power for electricity production. In this way, nuclear power was translated into a comprehensive promise of security that was intended to salvage the future of nuclear power as well as that of its investors in the face of growing anti-nuclear sentiment.


Author(s):  
Heather L. Bailey

Focusing on the period between the revolutions of 1848 to 1849 and the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), this book explores the circumstances under which westerners, concerned about the fate of the papacy, the Ottoman Empire, Poland, and Russian imperial power, began to conflate the Russian Orthodox Church with the state and to portray the Church as the political tool of despotic tsars. As the book demonstrates, in response to this reductionist view, Russian Orthodox publicists launched a public relations campaign in the West, especially in France, in the 1850s and 1860s. The linchpin of their campaign was the building of the impressive Saint Alexander Nevsky Church in Paris, consecrated in 1861. The book posits that, as the embodiment of the belief that Russia had a great historical purpose inextricably tied to Orthodoxy, the Paris church both reflected and contributed to the rise of religious nationalism in Russia that followed the Crimean War. At the same time, the confrontation with westerners' negative ideas about the Eastern Church fueled a reformist spirit in Russia while contributing to a better understanding of Eastern Orthodoxy in the West.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Seung-jun Moon ◽  
Jong Dae Kim ◽  
Tae Woo Kim

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-124
Author(s):  
Siti Meisyaroh ◽  
Marcella Novena

News about environmental issues have led many companies and fast food restaurants like KFC started the Public Relations campaign movement with the theme #NOSTRAWMOVEMENT which was done simultaneously in all of their outlets in Indonesia. KFC Raden Inten becomes case in study. This study aims to determine the influence of the Public Relations campaign #NOSTRAWMOVEMENT will influence consumer participation in KFC Raden Inten. This research uses stimulus- respons (S-R) theory and participation concept which can be interpreted as taking part or taking a role in activities or activities. The author uses this theory because I want to know how much consumer participation is influenced by Public Relations campaign #NOSTRAWMOVEMENT of KFC. Participation is divided into two categories, direct participation and indirect participation. In this study, researchers used quantitative research with a descriptive and explanatory approach. Data collection techniques used in this study were documentation and questionnaire filling as part of the survey. Researchers used a survei method using a questionnaire. Data analysis techniques using validity test, reliability test, normality test, t test, F test and R2 test. Based on the data processing carried out, this study obtained the result that the relationship between the Public Relations campaign variables and consumer participation had a positive and significant influence.   Keywords: Public Relations Campaign, Consumer Participation, Consumer Attitude


2022 ◽  
Vol 128 (5) ◽  
pp. 167-198
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Pękacka-Falkowska

The article discusses the hitherto unknown correspondence between the Danzig (present-day Gdańsk) botanist Jacob Breyne, his son Johann Philipp Breyne, and James Petiver in the last decade of the seventeenth century. Their correspondence documents contacts between one of the most important naturalists of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the seventeenth century and members of the Royal Society. The content of the letters reveals how books, naturalia and various artefacts circulated between Western and East-Central Europe. It also reveals the principles of reciprocity and friendship followed by those who conducted inquiries into natural history.


2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandon W. Hawk

This article provides an examination of the earliest history of the term prosthesis in English, re-evaluating other such histories with previously unrecognized archival material from early printed books. These sources include sixteenth- and seventeenth-century early printed books such as handbooks of grammar, English dictionaries, British Latin dictionaries, and medical treatises on surgery. Such an investigation reveals both a more nuanced trajectory of the early history of the word in English and fuller context for a shift in meaning from usages in the study of grammar and rhetoric to the study of medicine and surgery. This narrative, then, speaks to the growth of medical knowledge and discourse in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well as concepts about disability that remain part of disability studies even in the present field.


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