The Evolution of the English Nautical Chart

1952 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 362-374
Author(s):  
A. H. W. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Present State ◽  
Nautical Chart ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Short Span ◽  
The Many ◽  
National Defence ◽  
Hydrographic Surveying

In a previous contribution Professor E. G. R. Taylor has reviewed the development of the sea chart up to 1600, the year in which Edward Wright published his celebrated chart of the world on Mercator's projection. Wright's chart represents one of many minor incursions on the part of English cartographers into the field of nautical cartography, which at that time and for the next hundred years was dominated by the flourishing Dutch school of hydrography. It was not until the latter began to decline towards the end of the seventeenth century that the English cartographer really came into his own and began to produce charts to assist the navigator. Thus the evolution of the English nautical chart to its present state of development covers a relatively short span when measured against the whole background of maritime enterprise and endeavour.The development over the past two hundred and fifty years has been sporadic rather than continuous, being characterized by sudden advances followed by long intervals of consolidation. Factors such as the needs of national defence, the invention of navigational instruments and advances in hydrographic surveying technique, have at various times acted as stimulants to chart evolution. Throughout the period under review responsibility for supplying the navigator with accurate charts has gradually passed from the many private publishing firms to a specially created national department.

Cities of Splendour in the Shaping of Sephardi History

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane S. Gerber
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Many ◽  
At Home

Sephardi identity has meant different things at different times, but has always entailed a connection with Spain, from which the Jews were expelled in 1492. While Sephardi Jews have lived in numerous cities and towns throughout history, certain cities had a greater impact on the shaping of their culture. This book focuses on those that may be considered most important, from Cordoba in the tenth century to Toledo, Venice, Safed, Istanbul, Salonica, and Amsterdam at the dawn of the seventeenth century. Each served as a venue in which a particular dimension of Sephardi Jewry either took shape or was expressed in especially intense form. Significantly, these cities were mostly heterogeneous in their population and culture — half of them under Christian rule and half under Muslim rule — and this too shaped the Sephardi worldview and attitude. While Sephardim cultivated a distinctive identity, they felt at home in the cultures of their adopted lands. The book demonstrates that Sephardi history and culture have always been multifaceted. The book's interdisciplinary approach captures the many contexts in which the life of the Jews from Iberia unfolded, without either romanticizing the past or diluting its reality.

L’Antartide è veramente un "awful place"? I caratteri ambientali del continente più freddo della Terra

2012 ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Claudio Smiraglia
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Population ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
South Pole ◽  
The Past ◽  
Unique Information ◽  
The World ◽  
Antarctic Continent ◽  
Harsh Climate ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Antarctic

The Antarctic continent is certainly made an "awful" place by its harsh climate: in the past, explorers and researchers endured terrible hardships and the climate remains a challenge today, in spite of the many improvements in knowledge and technology. The Antarctic may be termed "the continent of the extremes", as it occupies an area unlike any other on earth. It is the farthest and most inaccessible and isolated continent; the most regular because of its rounded shape, with the South Pole at the centre; the coldest continent, with temperatures falling to -90°C; the driest (with an average of 130 mm of precipitation); the windiest, the highest, the most glacialized (it contains 91% of the volume of the earth’s ice). It also displays the most monotonous landscapes and presents the greatest contrast between marine and terrestrial ecosystems. But the Antarctic is also "extreme" because it is the least populated continent, with no indigenous population at all, while its few settlements (consisting in scientific bases) are concentrated on the coast; it is the only place that does not belong to one nation, but to all the world; it is the place where unique information on the past, present and future of humankind is revealed.

From anti-idyll to the “poem of desolation”: the traditions of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in the “estate text” of the early XX century

2020 ◽  
pp. 36-47
Author(s):  
Galina I. Romanova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Present State ◽  
Final Solution ◽  
Cause And Effect ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Speech Genre ◽  
Formal Features

On the basis of thematic proximity and similarity of a number of formal features (chronotope of the noble nest; the image of the negative aspects of the es- tate life; the weakening of cause-and-effect relations between the events; the system of characters, tied by relation, but separated spiritually; the specificity of organization of speech) genre transformations in the last novel of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “Old Years in Poshe khonye” (1889) and in the short stories cycle of I.A. Bunin “Black Earth” (1903) have compared. The theme of returning to their homeland also brings them closer together — a mental appeal to the past, that is, in Poshekhon’s childhood by Saltykov-Shchedrin, the road to the family estate — by Bunin. In both works embodied a persistent conflict that does not find a final solution. The sharp denial of the present state of reality, characteristic of satire, presupposes the existence of an ideal, which in the works by Saltykov-Shchedrin and appears as an idyllic picture of the world. In relation to it, the image of estate life in both “Old Years in Poshekhonye” and “Black Earth” is anti-idyllic: here everything is the opposite and contradicts the idyllic notions of peaceful life in harmony with nature. In Bunin’s story, this feature is shown in the appeal to the genre of “poem of desolation”.

scholarly journals Cataclysmic Variables - Concluding Remarks

1987 ◽  
Vol 93 ◽  
pp. 795-798
Author(s):  
Z.Deněk Kopal
Keyword(s):  
Present State ◽  
Cataclysmic Variables ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Remaining Time

Kitamura sensei, ladies and gentlemen: the remarks which follow will be the last communication by which our colloquium on cataclysmic variables is to be brought to its conclusion; and I appreciate the invitation of its organizing committee to use the remaining time we have together in the congenial atmosphere created for us at Bamberg, in an attempt at a summary of what we heard here in the past few days from several hundred colleagues who gathered here from many parts of the world - to survey the present state of our subject, and consider together where do we go from here. The time for this purpose makes it impossible to touch upon all exciting developments in the field of cataclysmic variables reported at Bamberg in the past few days; but certain general features have emerged from the programme of our colloquium which it may be appropriate to recall.

Four Hundred Years of Freemasonry in Scotland

2011 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Status ◽  
High Status ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many

Scotland has the oldest masonic lodges and the oldest masonic records in the world, predating their English counterparts by over a century. Yet freemasonry is usually neglected by social and cultural historians, partly, it may be, through ignorance and negative stereotypes of the movement and partly through the excessive secrecy of freemasons in the past. It is the purpose of this paper to survey the movement's development and indicate the many aspects of ‘the Craft’ that could prove rich subjects for research. Scottish lodges began as organisations of stonemasons but, at first slowly, began to admit men from other crafts and men of higher social status. This process accelerated fast after the foundation of a Grand Lodge in London in 1717: freemasonry became fashionable. But though many lodges came to be dominated by men of high status, many others remained – and remain – skilled working class in membership.

Dogs

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Domestic Dogs ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between humans and dogs has garnered considerable attention within archaeological research around the world. Investigations into the lived experiences of domestic dogs have proven to be an intellectually productive avenue for better understanding humanity in the past. This book examines the human-canine connection by moving beyond asking when, why, or how the dog was domesticated. While these questions are fundamental, beyond them lies a rich and textured history of humans maintaining a bond with another species through cooperation and companionship over thousands of years. Diverse techniques and theoretical approaches are used by authors in this volume to investigate the many ways dogs were conceptualized by their human counterparts in terms of both their value and social standing within a variety of human cultures across space and time. In this way, this book contributes a better understanding of the human-canine bond while also participating in broader anthropological discussions about how human interactions with domesticated animals shape their practices and worldviews.

The Libraries of Newton, Hooke and Boyle

1966 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-55 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Sir Isaac Newton ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The demand and search for the scientific literature of the past has grown enormously in the last twenty years. In an age as conscious as ours of the significance of science to mankind, some scientists naturally turned their thoughts to the origins of science as we know it, how scientific theories grew and how discoveries were made. Both institutions and individual scientists partake in these interests and form collections of books necessary for their study. How did their predecessors fare in this respect? They, of course, formed their libraries at a time when books were easy to find—and cheap. But what did they select for their particular reading? For example, what did the libraries of the three greatest scientists of the seventeenth century, Sir Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle, look like? Fortunately in the case of Newton, the history of his books is now fairly clear, thanks to the devoted labours of Colonel R . de Villamil (i), but it is a sad reflection on our attitude to our great intellectual leaders that this library o f the greatest English scientist, whose work changed the world for hundreds of years, was not taken care of, was, in fact, forgotten and at times entirely neglected.

Mary's Protestant Martyrs and Elizabeth's Catholic Traitors in the Age of Catholic Emancipation

1982 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-185
Author(s):  
John E. Drabble
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gunpowder Plot ◽  
The Many ◽  
Church Councils

Debates over the interpretation of the English Reformation often have followed from the wider controversies of the day. This was especially true in the years before Catholic Emancipation, when political tensions led Catholic, Anglican, and Whig historians to revive the many quarrels about the past. Of these disputes, the persecutions under Mary I and the alleged treason of Elizabethan Catholics seemed most relevant to the issue of Catholic freedom. From John Foxe had come the Anglican image of Catholic cruelty; from the statutes and official tracts of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the obsessive fears of Catholic treason. John Foxe taught his generation that persecution and treason had been practiced by the papal antichrist since the fourteenth century. The apparent timelessness of Roman evil was given new support by the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the Irish Massacres of 1641. Moreover, by culling quotations from church councils, papal decrees, and Catholic divines, seventeenth-century Anglican writers alleged that treason and cruelty flowed from the very principles of the Roman church. Since those same principles had been established as early as 1215 and never had been rescinded, the lesson was clear enough: the penal laws could not be ended until Rome changed. For the historians of the English Reformation, Mary's fires and Elizabeth's traitors would show not only what Rome had been but what it must always be.

American Historiography and Comparative Analysis: Further Reflections

1963 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Hartz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Reverse Migration ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World

In the seventeenth century America escaped from the world, in the twentieth century it has been forced to return to it. This cycle contains the drama of the American historical consciousness which protected America's provincialism in the past but is bound now, in the age of the reverse migration, to serve as an instrument of its dissolution.

scholarly journals The Spy Power, Technological Innovations, and the Human Dimensions of Intelligence: Recent Presidential Abuse of America’s Secret Agencies

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Loch K Johnson
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Effective Policy ◽  
Human Side ◽  
The Many

The purpose of national security intelligence is to provide policy officials with an advantage in the making of effective policy, based on the collection and analysis of accurate information from around the world that can help to illuminate a decision. Foreknowledge is invaluable in the service of a nation’s security; and, in the gathering of useful information, technological innovations in the world of intelligence can result in a stronger shield to protect citizens against the many dangers that lurk across the continents in this uncertain and hostile world.  Despite all the marvels of modern espionage tradecraft, the governments that rely on them must still deal with the human side of intelligence activities. Unfortunately, arrogance, shortsightedness, laziness, frenetic schedules, and the corrosive influences of power (among other flaws) often lead policy officials to ignore or warp the advantages they could accrue from advanced intelligence spycraft, if they would only use these sources and methods properly. This article examines some of the problems that imperfect human behavior has created for intelligence in the United States at the highest levels of government over the past two decades.

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