scholarly journals The reception of William Paley's Natural Theology in the University of Cambridge

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
AILEEN FYFE

In order to pass the BA examination, it was, also, necessary to get up Paley's Evidences of Christianity, and his Moral Philosophy. This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of the Evidences with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley. The logic of this book and, as I may add, of his Natural Theology gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only part of the Academical Course which, as I then felt and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the education of my mind.Charles DarwinAutobiographyOne of the books Charles Darwin read at Cambridge University was William Paley's Natural Theology (1802). Many scholars have assumed that this was a set text at the university in the early nineteenth century. However, a study of the examination papers of the university, and contemporary memoirs, autobiographies and correspondence, reveals no evidence that this was so, though it did appear in some of the college examinations. This contrasts with other books by Paley which did appear for many years in both university and college examinations. This paper uses the misapprehension about Paley's text as a starting point to investigate the role of natural theology in a Cambridge education in the first three decades of the nineteenth century.

2008 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. C. LUBENOW

The question in 1898 of the recognition by Cambridge University of St Edmund's House, a Roman Catholic foundation, might initially seem to involve questions irrelevant in the modern university. It can, however, be seen to raise issues concerning modernity, the place of religion in the university and the role of the university itself. This article therefore sets this incident in university history in wider terms and examines the ways in which the recognition of St Edmund's House was a chapter in the history of liberalism, in the history of Roman Catholicism, in the history of education and in the history of secularism.


1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 207-217
Author(s):  
Peter Holland

In this wide-ranging article. Peter Holland explores the relationship between the director and the playwright from contrasting historical and artistic perspectives. A typical film-contract, as recently signed by Trevor Griffiths with Warner Brothers, is thus made to shed retrospective light on the less overtly proprietorial assumptions which governed Stanislavski's approach to the plays of Chekhov – and which, in effect, sanitized them of their political insights into pre-revolutionary Russian society, creating instead bourgeois tragedies about flawed individuals. Acknowledging the difficulties of creating a framework within which the role of the playwright could be introduced more authoritatively into the theatrical structure, the author nonetheless stresses the importance of recognizing the nature of the hierarchy, which gives pre-eminence to the directorial ‘reading’. Peter Holland, University Lecturer in Drama in the University of Cambridge, is currently writing (in collaboration with Vera Gottlieb) a study of Stanislavski for Cambridge University Press, and is preparing the Oxford Shakespeare edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream.


2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA WALSHAM

ABSTRACTThis article is a revised and expanded version of my inaugural lecture as Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, delivered on 20 Oct. 2011. It explores how the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reshaped perceptions of the past, stimulated shifts in historical method, and transformed the culture of memory, before turning to the interrelated question of when and why contemporaries began to remember the English Reformation as a decisive juncture and critical turning point in history. Investigating the interaction between personal recollection and social memory, it traces the manner in which remembrance of the events of the 1530s, 1540s, and 1550s evolved and splintered between 1530 and 1700. A further theme is the role of religious and intellectual developments in the early modern period in forging prevailing models of historical periodization and teleological paradigms of interpretation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Renner

The article “Drawing It Out” by Haidy Geismar (2014) in Visual Anthropology Review (Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 97–113) focused on the use of images in early anthropology. The drawings by Arthur Bernard Deacon (1903–1927), which he made during his field studies in Vanuatu, New Hebrides from 1926 until his sudden death caused by blackwater fever in 1927, are the starting point of Geismar’s inquiry. The author discusses Deacon’s drawings and infers the potential of drawing as a methodology for anthropology. Deacon was a young PhD candidate who was sent to Vanuatu from the University of Cambridge. It was his intention to continue the studies of the indigenous culture of the New Hebrides at the time, which had been started by the Department of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. In contrast to his expectations, Deacon found a culture in the process of decay. The subject of his study, the indigenous culture, had been threatened by diseases and cultural influences that settlers, missionaries, and traders imported with them since they landed in the middle of the nineteenth century. Deacon described the impossibility of protecting the indigenous culture and critically reflected on his role as an anthropologist (Geismar 2014, p. 102).


Antiquity ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 35 (140) ◽  
pp. 281-285
Author(s):  
Bruce Dickins

In this article, Professor Bruce Dickins, Emeritus Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge and sometime Director of the Survey, takes the opportunity of the publication of two general surveys of English Place-Names and of three volumes of the West Riding Survey, to discuss the development of English Place-Name Studies in the last sixty years. The books he here discusses are:–THE ORIGIN OF ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES by P. H. Reaney. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960 (second impression 1961). pp. x + 278. 32s. net.ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES. By Kenneth Cameron. London, Batsford. 1961. pp. 256 and 8 plates. 30$. net.THE PLACE-NAMES OF THE WEST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE. By A. H. Smith. Parts I-III (English Place-Name Society, Vols. XXX-XXXII). Cambridge, University Press, 1961. pp. xii + 346 + map, pp. xii + 322 + map, pp. xiv + 278 + map. 35s. net per volume.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Lucio Baccaro ◽  
Chiara Benassi ◽  
Guglielmo Meardi

This special issue wants to honour the memory of Giulio Regeni, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge who was assassinated while he was conducting field research on independent trade unions in Egypt. This introduction and the following articles focus on the theoretical, empirical and methodological questions at the core of Regeni’s research. Unions have traditionally been regarded as crucial for representing the interests of the working class as a whole and for building and sustaining industrial and political democracy; however, there is a debate about the conditions under which unions can be effective, and the role of unions’ internal democracy is particularly controversial. The article discusses the theoretical linkages between trade unions, democratization and union democracy and concludes with a reflection on the new concerns about the risk of conducting field research on these issues raised by Regeni’s death.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document