The Optics of Virtue in Boyle, Cowley, and Behn

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-191
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Visual Control ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Father Figure ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Restoration Comedy ◽  
Visual Engagement

This chapter reads Aphra Behn’s farcical play, The Emperor of the Moon (1687), as a sustained and engaged critique of the figure of the experimentalist ‘virtuoso’ as he is presented in defences of the Royal Society circulating in Restoration London. It begins with a close reading of the language of virtue in a series of Royal Society apologetics before turning to Behn’s play in order to show how Behn exposes the ironies present in the virtuoso’s claim to transcend sensual pleasures in pursuit of intellectual ones when measured against the sexually charged language with which these same self-proclaimed virtuosos describe their own experimental practices. By bringing the conventional controlling father figure of Restoration comedy together with the figure of the virtuoso, Behn’s play reveals the extent to which the latter was dependent upon a gendered rhetoric of voyeurism and visual control. At the same time, she leverages the hypocrisy of the virtuoso’s claims to virtuous viewership in order to question other forms of patriarchal authority over women’s bodies and women’s desires. The chapter concludes with a reading of Behn’s poem ‘On a Juniper Tree’ (1684) as an imaginative work that presents a more ethical model of visual engagement with feminine and natural bodies.

scholarly journals An account of some very considerable observations made at Ballasore in India, serving to find the longitude of that place, and rectifying very great errours in some famous modern geographers; communicated by Mr. Edmund Hally, Fellow of the Royal Society.

1682 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-126
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
The Moon

Anno 1680. October 28, stilo veteri, the moon applied to the bulls eye; which star was observed to be eclipsed at Greenwich by Mr. Flamstead, and at London in Basinghall-Street, by Mr. Haines, and my self;

Introductory remarks

1994 ◽  
Vol 349 (1690) ◽  
pp. 169-170
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Field ◽  
Magnetic Fields ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Lunar Regolith ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Global Magnetic Field ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Planetary Missions ◽  
Speculative Hypothesis ◽  
First Time

This year marks not only the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first manned landing on the Moon ( Apollo 11 ) but also the thirty-fifth anniversary of the first planetary missions. The latter was the Soviet Luna 1 and 2 carrying magnetometers to test whether the Moon possessed a global magnetic field. Luna 1 passed the Moon but Luna 2 crash landed, both showed that the Moon had no magnetic field as large as 50 or 100 y (1 y = 10 -5 G = 10 -9 T). Such an experiment had been proposed by S. Chapman ( Nature 160, 395 (1947)) to test a speculative hypothesis concerning magnetic fields of cosmic bodies by P. M. S. Blackett ( Nature 159, 658 (1947)). Chapman’s suggestion was greeted by general amusement: 12 years later it was accomplished. Also two years after the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, Luna 3 was launched and for the first time viewed the far side of the Moon on 9 October, 1959. Laboratories from many countries were invited by NASA to take part in the analysis of rocks returned from the Apollo missions and later from the Soviet automated return of cores from the lunar regolith. British laboratories were very active in this work, and a review of the results of the new understanding of the Moon as a result of space missions formed the subject of a Royal Society Discussion Meeting in 1975 (published in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond . A 285). British laboratories received samples from the automated Soviet missions that took cores from the regolith and returned them to Earth. Work on Luna 16 and 20 samples were published in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond . A 284 131-177 (1977) and on Luna 24 in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond . A 297 1-50 (1979).

scholarly journals VIII. Astronomical observations. In two letters from M. Francis de Zach, Professor of Mathematics, and Member of the Royal Academies of Sciences at Marseilles, Dijon, and Lyons, to Mr. Tiberius Cavallo, F. R. S

1785 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 137-152
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Vernal Equinox ◽  
Astronomical Observations ◽  
Pendulum Clock ◽  
Jupiter’S Satellites

Sir, I send you the account of the observations on the eclipse of the moon, which I have made together with the rev. Father Le Fevre, Astronomer at Lyons, in the Observatory called au grand Collège ; to which I shall add the observations of the vernal equinox; some observation son Jupiter's satellites, made at Marseilles by M. Saint Jacques de Sylvabelle; and, lastly, a new solution of a problem that occurs in computing the orbits of comets. If you think that these observations do in any way deserve the notice of the Royal Society, I ascertain the going of the pendulum clock, I took several corresponding altitudes of the sun, which you will find in the following table.On the day of the eclipse the sky was very serene, nothing could be finer, and it continued so during the observation.

scholarly journals On the meteorological observations made at the apartments of the Royal Society, during the year 1827, 1828, and 1829

1837 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 42-43
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Limited Range ◽  
Diurnal Variations ◽  
The Moon ◽  
French Academy ◽  
Annual Variations ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Meteorological Observations ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The author first inquires into the annual and diurnal variations of the barometer and thermometer, for the determination of which he takes the mean of the observations in each month made at the Apartments of the Royal Society, during the years 1827,1828, and 1829; and also that deduced from Mr. Bouvard’s observations, published in the Memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences. From the table given it would appear that the annual variations are independent of the diurnal variations. A much greater number of observations than we possess at present, made frequently and at stated times each day, are requisite before any very satisfactory conclusion can be deduced as to the influence of the moon on the fluctuations of the barometer. The author, however, has attempted the inquiry, as far as the limited range of the present records will allow, by classifying all the observed heights, corresponding to a particular age of the moon, as defined by her transit taking place within a given half hour of the day; and thence deducing mean results, which are exhibited in tables. The results afforded by the observations at Somerset House differ widely from those obtained from corresponding observations made at the Paris Observatory. According to the former, the barometer is highest at new and full moons, and lowest at the quadratures the extent of the fluctuations being 0.08 of an inch: according to the lottery the controly is the esse, and the extent is only 0.05 of an inch.

scholarly journals IV. Lunar influence on temperature

1865 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 223-228 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Vexed Question

The tabulation of an unbroken series of thermometric observations for the several days of the lunation during fifty years having been completed up to November 1864, and an amount of lunar action detected which appears sufficient to set at rest the long vexed question of the moon’s influence over our atmosphere, I venture to think that the time has arrived when it becomes a duty to lay the results of the investigation before the Royal Society. In 1856 the frequent recurrence of higher temperatures about the eighth or ninth day of the moon’s age, led to an examination and comparison of the mean temperatures of the third day before, and the second day after first quarter of the moon, for a series of seven years at Chiswick, and sixteen years at Dublin. The results showed conclusively that the temperature of the second day after first quarter was higher than the temperature of the third day before that phase during the years in question.

My Heart Belongs to Daddy

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-482
Author(s):  
Kurt Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Complex Network ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Father Figure ◽  
The World

The article examines George Konrád’s 1989 novel from the point of view of three of the main protagonists: Jeremiah Kadron, a retired translator, his daughter Melinda, and János Dragomán, who left Hungary in the mid-1960s and who has recently returned to Budapest. When the ninety-year old Jeremiah suddenly announces that he is leaving for a trip around the world, he unexpectedly names Dragomán as his literary executor and, moreover, appears to deliberately undermine Melinda’s marriage by placing her and the lady-killer Dragomán in close quarters. While Jeremiah and Dragomán are in several respects very different from each other, a close reading of the text reveals a complex network of similarities between the two men in terms of their life histories, personal habits, political and philosophical attitudes, and even matters of dress. By comparing these shared traits, the article demonstrates how Jeremiah represents a kind of spiritual “father figure” to the younger Dragomán. Moreover, it argues that Jeremiah chooses Dragomán over other possible candidates not only because of the latter’s obvious intellectual prowess, but to a large extent precisely because of those common characteristics, insofar as they make him eminently suitable as a surrogate father/lover to watch over Jeremiah’s daughter in the old man’s absence. Finally, the article explores how Konrád’s pairing of the two men explains to some extent Melinda’s attraction to Dragomán.

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