A note on the correspondence of Martin Folkes, P. R. S

The continual loss of public and private papers through neglect or even destruction because their historical value is not appreciated justifies this note on the vicissitudes of the correspondence and other papers of Martin Folkes, who held the office of President of the Royal Society from 1741 to 1752. He was born in 1690, and was educated at Saumur and Cambridge, where he laid the foundations of his extensive knowledge in mathematics and other subjects. Though he contributed a number of papers on astronomy and metrology to the Philosophical Transactions, he is chiefly remembered for his work on numismatics (he was a great connoisseur of ancient and modern coins), as well as for his knowledge of antiquities. Under his presidency the Royal Society meetings developed a literary rather than a scientific character, and it must be admitted that there was a decline from the former standards. This lapse, noticeable also in the quality of some of the memoirs printed in the 'Transactions, was apparent even to some of his contemporaries, who expressed their disapproval in pamphlets written with characteristic eighteenth century vigour.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tad Skotnicki

This paper provides a comparative historical sociology of a contemporary phenomenon: the tendency to equate “ethical” goods with aesthetic quality. Studies of moral markets suggest that this equation of ethics and quality would reveal a process whereby moral sensibilities saturate market forms and processes. Yet this paper argues that we should also examine how these forms and processes can condition moral sensibilities, not just absorb them. Drawing on primary source archival materials from late eighteenth century abolitionists and turn-of-the-twentieth-century consumer activists, the author demonstrates that these activists participated in a recurring purity politics of consumption conditioned by the commodity form. This manifests in activists’ equation of: 1) the treatment of the laborers and 2) the quality of the labor with 3) the quality of the goods. To claim that goods were pure, in many instances, was also to claim that the laborers and the labor conditions behind those goods were as well. This purity politics, further, entails both public and private ways of arguing for the equation of ethics and quality, as well as distinct civic visions of ethical labor. It also opens up ways to explore certain racialized dimensions of the commodity form.


Author(s):  
Roohi Abbas

Background: Ever since quality of services is gaining importance in every industry as it is the indicator of consumer/customer satisfaction, it is of utmost importance to measure service quality of educational institutes to determine the satisfaction of students. Thus, the study aimed to determine the important factors in service quality dimensions which contribute to the satisfaction of students. Methods: This was a Comparative Cross Sectional study in which final year department of physical therapy (DPT) students were included from three private and three public physiotherapy institutes. Results: The largest mean Positive Gap scores for Public Physiotherapy Institutes was 0.18 for accessibility and affordability 0.18. The largest negative mean gap score for Private Physiotherapy domain was “Accessibility and Affordability” found to be -1.96. Conclusion: Students were satisfied with service quality of private institutes in all domains except for the “Accessibility and Affordability” whereas, in Public Institutes largest negative quality gaps were found in “Empathy” and “Assurance”.


Author(s):  
José van

Platformization affects the entire urban transport sector, effectively blurring the division between private and public transport modalities; existing public–private arrangements have started to shift as a result. This chapter analyzes and discusses the emergence of a platform ecology for urban transport, focusing on two central public values: the quality of urban transport and the organization of labor and workers’ rights. Using the prism of platform mechanisms, it analyzes how the sector of urban transport is changing societal organization in various urban areas across the world. Datafication has allowed numerous new actors to offer their bike-, car-, or ride-sharing services online; selection mechanisms help match old and new complementors with passengers. Similarly, new connective platforms are emerging, most prominently transport network companies such as Uber and Lyft that offer public and private transport options, as well as new platforms offering integrated transport services, often referred to as “mobility as a service.”


Author(s):  
Samuel Llano

This chapter provides an account of how organilleros elicited public anger because their activity did not fit into any of the social aid categories that had been in place since the late eighteenth century. Social aid in Spain relied on a clear-cut distinction between deserving and undeserving poor in order to rationalize the distribution of limited resources and reduce mendicancy on the streets. Organilleros could not, strictly speaking, be considered idle, since they played music, but their activity required no specific skills and was regarded with suspicion as a surrogate form of begging. The in-betweenness of the organillero caused further anger as it challenged attempts to establish a neat distinction between public and private spaces. On one hand, organillo music penetrated the domestic space, which conduct manuals of the nineteenth century configured as female; on the other, it brought women into the public space, which those manuals configured as male.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-606
Author(s):  
CHRISTINE WALLIS

This article reports on the use of the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource in historical sociolinguistics and historical linguistics courses at the University of Sheffield. Pronouncing dictionaries are an invaluable resource for students learning about processes of standardisation and language attitudes during the Late Modern English period (1700–1900), however they are not easy to use in their original format. Each author uses their own notation system to indicate their recommended pronunciation, while the terminology used to describe the quality of the vowels and consonants differs from that used today, and provides an additional obstacle to the student wishing to interrogate such sources. ECEP thus provides a valuable intermediary between the students and the source material, as it includes IPA equivalents for the recommended pronunciations, as well as any metalinguistic commentary offered by the authors about a particular pronunciation. This article demonstrates a teaching approach that not only uses ECEP as a tool in its own right, but also explores how it can be usefully combined with other materials covering language change in the Late Modern English period to enable students to undertake their own investigations in research-led courses.


In the Royal Society archives there is a collection of drawings of Aloes and other plants, made by two of the great botanical artists of the eighteenth century - Georg Dionysius Ehret and Jacob van Huysum. Although the Manuscripts General Series Catalogue records this manuscript only as a ‘Volume of 35 botanical paintings by Georg Dionysius Ehret’ of unknown provenance, the manuscript catalogue of the Arundel and other manuscripts, said to be the work of Jonas Dryander (1748-1810), provides the first clue linking these drawings to the two artists, and to the important collection of Aloes growing at that time in the Society of Apothecaries Physic Garden at Chelsea'. The history of the commissioning of the drawings is told briefly in the Journal Books of the Royal Society, and in the Minutes of Council, but the significance of these lovely and important drawings has been almost completely overlooked.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Morton

Not a day goes by in the 2010s without some humanities scholars becoming quite exercised about the termAnthropocene. In case we need reminding,Anthropocenenames the geological period starting in the later eighteenth century when, after the invention of the steam engine, humans began to deposit layers of carbon in Earth’s crust. Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer’s term has been current since 2000.1In 1945, there occurred “The Great Acceleration,” a huge data spike in the graph of human involvement in Earth systems. (The title’s Kubrick joke stems from the crustal deposition of radioactive materials since 1945.) Like Marx, Crutzen sees the steam engine as iconic. As this is written, geologists such as Jan Zalasiewicz are convincing the Royal Society of Geologists to make the term official.


2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEATRICE MORING

The aim of this article is to explore the economic status and the quality of life of widows in the Nordic past, based on the evidence contained in retirement contracts. Analysis of these contracts also shows the ways in which, and when, land and the authority invested in the headship of the household were transferred between generations in the Nordic countryside. After the early eighteenth century, retirement contracts became more detailed but these should be viewed not as a sign of tension between the retirees and their successors but as a family insurance strategy designed to protect the interests of younger siblings of the heir and his or her old parents, particularly if there was a danger of the property being acquired by a non-relative. Both the retirement contracts made by couples and those made by a widow alone generally guaranteed them an adequate standard of living in retirement. Widows were assured of an adequately heated room of their own, more generous provision of food than was available to many families, clothing and the right to continue to work, for example at spinning and milking, but to be excused heavy labour. However, when the land was to be retained by the family, in many cases there was no intention of establishing a separate household.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document