The Philosophical Background of Ethnological Theory

Philosophy ◽  
1927 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 182-189
Author(s):  
G. Elliot Smith
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Early History ◽  
Spontaneous Generation ◽  
Common Occurrence ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Every student of the early history of mankind, and their numbers have greatly increased of recent years, must be well acquainted with the recent conflict between the advocates of diffusion in interpreting the origins and world-wide manifestations of civilization and those of independent development, or, in more exact terms, of the spontaneous generation of cultures. To an unbiassed observer of the evidence, it must also be a matter of astonishment that the ethnologists of the latter school have for so long refused to admit a distribution of ideas, beliefs and customs which are not only of proved historical but daily and common occurrence. It is impossible to enter a library or a club, or to walk down Regent Street and look into the shop windows, without realizing that world-diffusion is the very stuff of civilized existence. It is impossible to travel the remoter regions of the globe to-day without being constantly reminded of London, Leeds and Manchester. Nobody, again, would dream of controverting the known phenomena of the spread of great religions, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, from a single original centre. The school of independent development of cultures not merely ignores or twists to its own purposes a gigantic mass of evidence bearing upon the subject in dispute and capable of being interpreted in only one way; it displays a singular disregardof common sense and human nature. The innate conservatism of humanity, its readiness to live on the.

scholarly journals Art. II.—Chronology of the Medes, from the Reign of Deioces to the Reign of Darius, the son of Hystaspes, or Darius the Mede

1860 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 39-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. W. Bosanquet
Keyword(s):  
Early History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The origin and duration of the empire of the Medes, which occupied 80 important a position in early Asiatic history, has been the subject of attention to many recent writers. The Lectures of Niebuhr on the Medes and Persians are probably familiar to us all. Dr. Leonard Schmitz, the translator of Niebuhr's works, has recently published his matured views on the same subject. Mr. Johannes Von Gumpach in 1852, Professor Brandis in 1853, and Jacob Kruger in 1856, have also expressed their views upon Median history and chronology; and within the last twelve months, the works of Marcus Von Niebuhr on Assyrian and Babylonian history, and the translation of Herodotus by the Rev. George Rawlinson, have appeared, embracing and commenting upon the early history of the Medes.

Science and common sense in the study of international politics

1984 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-39
Author(s):  
Roger D. Spegele
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Humean View

The history of recent efforts to establish a science of international politics may be usefully viewed as elaborate glosses on David Hume's powerful philosophical programme for resolving, reconciling or dissolving a variety of perspicuous dualities: the external and the internal, mind and body, reason and experience. Philosophers and historians of ideas still dispute the extent to which Hume succeeded but if one is to judge by the two leading ‘scientific’ research programmes1 for international politics—inductivism and naive falsificationism —these dualities are as unresolved as ever, with fatal consequences for the thesis of the unity of the sciences. For the failure to reconcile or otherwise dissolve such divisions shows that, on the Humean view, there is at least one difference between the physical (or natural) sciences. and the moral (or social) sciences: namely, that while the latter bear on the internal and external, the former are concerned primarily with the external. How much this difference matters and how the issue is avoided by the proponents of inductivism and naïve falsification is the subject matter of this paper.

Past Belief

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-40
Author(s):  
Anthony Grafton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Royal Road ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Church

This chapter examines the centrality of early modern ecclesiastical history, written by Catholics as well as Protestants, in the refinement of research techniques and practices anticipatory of modern scholarship. To Christians of all varieties, getting the Church's early history right mattered. Eusebius's fourth-century history of the Church opened a royal road into the subject, but he made mistakes, and it was important to be able to ferret them out. Saint Augustine was recognized as a sure-footed guide to the truth about the Church's original and bedrock beliefs, but some of the Saint's writings were spurious, and it was important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. To distinguish true belief from false, teams of religious scholars gathered documents; the documents in turn were subjected to skeptical scrutiny and philological critique; and sources were compared and cited. The practices of humanistic scholarship, it turns out, came from within the Catholic Church itself as it examined its own past.

Hume and the Customary Causes of Industry, Knowledge and Humanity

2018 ◽  
pp. 184-207
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Causal Analysis ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Examines Hume’s account of economic development as a subset of the history of civilisation, which is presented by him as a history of customs and manners. Since Hume believes that the subject matter of ‘economics’ is amenable to scientific analysis, the focus is on his employment of causal analysis and how he elaborates an analysis of customs as causes to account for social change. This is executed chiefly via an examination Hume’s Essays, though the History of England (as a test case) and the Treatise of Human Nature for its expression of Hume’s seminal analysis of causation are also incorporated.

The Early History of the Gyroscope and Gyro Compass

1970 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-89
Author(s):  
G. B. Lauf
Keyword(s):  
Current Literature ◽  
Early History ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Gyro Compass

Most of the current literature in the field of gyroscopic theory and in the use of gyroscopic instruments for the determination of azimuth begins the historical account of the subject with the work of Leon Foucault during the period 1850-1852. But little is known of the work in this field by others during the preceding half century. In this paper, the development of the gyroscope and gyro compass is traced back to a date earlier than 1813.

scholarly journals XI.—On the Discovery of the Remains of the Priory of Austin Friars at Ludlow

Archaeologia ◽  
1863 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-188
Author(s):  
Beriah Botfield
Keyword(s):  
Early History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Town ◽  
Graphic Description ◽  
At Will

The early history of Ludlow has been so well detailed by Mr. Eyton in his Antiquities of Shropshire, and has been so elaborately illustrated by Mr. Wright in his volume specially devoted to the subject, that I need not enlarge on its general history in endeavouring to elucidate the recently discovered remains of the Priory of Austin Friars. I cannot, however, refrain from quoting the graphic description of Churchyarde, who, writing in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, thus describes Ludlow:—The Town doth stand most part upon an hill,Built well and fair, with streets both large and wide,The houses such where strangers lodge at will,As long as there the Council liste abide.Both fine and clean the streets are all throughout,With condits cleere and wholesome water springe,And who that list to walk the Town about,Shall find therein some rare and pleasant thinge;But chiefly here the ayre so sweet you have,As in no place you can no better crave.

The Orpheus Metope from Bassai

1981 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 323-328
Author(s):  
Carlos Arturo Picón
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Temple

A fruitful combination of excavation, fieldwork, and research has in recent years increased our knowledge of the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai. In particular, the sculptured frieze which encircled the interior of the cella has been the subject of numerous studies, the most recent being the monograph by C. Hofkes-Brukker and A. Mallwitz published in 1975. The investigations made at Bassai by N. Yalouris and F. A. Cooper have produced important new evidence. As a result of the excavations conducted by Yalouris since 1959, the early history of the sanctuary and of the structures preceding the classical (‘Iktinian’) temple are reasonably clear. Furthermore, Cooper has shown that the ‘Iktinian’ building, the fourth in a series of temples to Apollo on the site, was not designed to receive pedimental sculpture, and that some, if not all, of this temple's akroteria were floral. The traditional attributions of pedimental and akroterial statues must be discarded, along with the theory that the ‘Iktinian’ building was started as early as the middle of the fifth century B.C.Yet, despite this progress, and the fact that the temple is one of the best-preserved monuments from antiquity, many issues remain controversial. Scholars postulate several building phases for the Classical temple. The chronology of the sculptures is still debated, as is the order of the twenty-three frieze-slabs within the cella.

Church Historians of the Early Twentieth Century: Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930)

2001 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. H. C. FREND
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Principal Factor ◽  
Early History ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Great Complexity

As in every other branch of learning, the study of the early history of Christianity has undergone massive changes during the last century. This has been due not only to the vast accumulation of knowledge through new discoveries, but to new approaches to the subject, together with the rise of archaeology as a principal factor in providing fresh information. The study of the early Church has as a result moved steadily from dogma to history, from attempts to interpret divine revelation through the development of doctrinal orthodoxy down the ages, to research into the historical development of an earthly institution of great complexity and of great significance in the history of mankind over the past two thousand years.

The Early History of Sweden

1881 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 174-215
Author(s):  
Henry H. Howorth
Keyword(s):  
World Wide ◽  
Early History ◽  
The West ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

In the previous papers which I have had the honour of reading before the Royal Historical Society, I have tried to elucidate the first adventures of the Norse pirates in the west, as related in the contemporary Frank and Irish annals, and have thus laid the foundation for an examination of the earlier story as contained in the Sagas. This is a singularly difficult field of inquiry, and one which has baffled many explorers. I can only hope to throw a few more rays of light into a very dark and perplexed subject. The Sagas are divided by Mr. Laing into two classes, historical (including biographical) and fabulous. Of the former, the most important were the Sagas, included in the works of Saxo Grammaticus, and Snorro the son of Sturle—two works of world-wide repute, and which have been (especially the former) a riddle and puzzle to most inquirers. Before we grapple with the problem before us, we must first dissect these two famous compilations.

The atmospheric Cherenkov technique in y-ray astronomy: the early days

1981 ◽  
Vol 301 (1462) ◽  
pp. 611-614 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
High Energy ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Ultra High Energy ◽  
Energy Bands ◽  
Short Contribution ◽  
Basic Physics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

At this meeting papers were given by Turver & Weekes and Sreekantan about the current status in the detection of ultra-high-energy y-rays in the energy range 10 11 —10 13 eV, by means of the atmospheric Cherenkov technique. There are two objectives of this short contribution. The first is to describe briefly the early history of the subject, and the second to outline the basic physics involved, which will reveal how the technique is essentially quite different from those used in the other energy bands in the y-ray spectrum.

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