The birth and early days of the Philosophical Transactions

The Royal Society was not the first scientific society, or organized academy for the promotion of science, to be founded, since it was preceded by the original Accademia del Cimento, which took its rise in 1657, but lived only ten years. The Royal Society is, then, the oldest corporate body of its kind to have enjoyed continuous existence until today. In a like way the Philosophical Transactions was not the earliest scientific periodical to come forth, since the first number of the Journal des Sçavans appeared, on 5 January 1665, two months before the first number of the Transactions . The Journal , however, while much concerned with scientific matters, including scientific books, dealt with the world of learning in general, including literary, legal and theological matters. Its pronouncements often led to stormy controversy, it had a troubled history and finally ceased to appear in 1790. The Transactions , except for a short break when it was replaced by Hooke’s Philosophical Collections , and for an interruption of three years that followed the landing of William of Orange and the flight of James II, has been published continuously from the issue of the first number dated 6 March 1664/5, the present year thus being the three hundredth anniversary of its beginning. Conspicuously connected with the first appearance of the Philosophical Transactions was Henry Oldenburg, a character very much to the fore in the early history of the Society.

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of X-rays by William Conrad Rontgen, which was made on 8 November 1895, a series of meetings were held in London during November 1945, twelve Societies participating. The inaugural meeting was held under the auspices of the Royal Society at Burlington House on 8 November, and was opened by the reigning President, Sir Henry Dale. He referred to the early history of the discharge in vacuo and gave a lively account of the impact of the discovery on men of science at Cambridge, where he was an undergraduate at the time. The discussion, devoted to various aspects of Rontgen’s great discovery and to its influence, was opened by Sir Lawrence Bragg, who gave an account of the contents of the two chemical papers in which Rontgen announced his findings to the world, one dated December 1895 and the other March 1896. Sir Lawrence drew attention to the wide range of this pioneer work and also to an important early letter of Schuster’s on the rays, published in Nature on 23 January 1896, with a full translation of Rontgen’s first paper.


2007 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herwig Wolfram

Throughout the world, historians expand the history of their nations and states into periods when these polities did not yet exist. The French speak of their first dynasty and mean the Frankish Merovingians. Until recently French history textbooks even for students in the French overseas territories started with “Nos ancêtres, les Gaulois.” In the German Kaiserreich between 1871 and 1918, let us say, little Jan Kowalski in Poznan had to accept the Germanic peoples as his forefathers, as every textbook on German history dealt with them at length. Needless to say, not only German medievalists speak of Germans long before theodiscus or teutonicus came to mean deutsch. All over the world people search for the roots of their identity. Take, for instance, the present preoccupation with Celtic ancestors. Not only the Irish, Welsh, Scots, and Bretons, but a great many other Europeans also want to be Celts by origin. “Their successors in Brittany, Wales, or Ireland do not threaten anybody with Anschluss or war. The Celtic origins, therefore, fit the Austrian neutrality perfectly well,” as Erich Zöllner ironically put it in 1976 after Chancellor Bruno Kreisky had openly declared that the Celts and not the Germans were our forefathers.


A brief review of the major advances since 1979 in Silurian and Devonian palaeobotany is followed by a preliminary report on a Gedinnian assemblage from the Welsh Borderland. This is dominated by rhyniopsids and includes several species of Cooksonia and Salopella . Spores have been isolated from a number of taxa. The assemblage is used to illustrate the problems of recognition and classification of early vascular plants. Parallel sedimentological and palaeogeographical studies permit speculation on the ecology and life histories of the plants that colonized the Old Red Continent. It is concluded that the lack of well preserved and independently dated assemblages from elsewhere in the world (an exception being the Baragwanathia flora of Australia) prevents the detection of any provincialism in the late Silurian and early Devonian and makes generalizations on the early history of vascular plants premature.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-175
Author(s):  
Warseto Freddy Sihombing

AbstractNo one can be justified before God for doing good deeds. No matter how good a man is, if he does not believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, he will not be saved from the wrath of God to come. There is no human being who is right before God, and no sinful man can save himself in any way. The only way out is in the way that God has given to the problem of all sinners, by sending Jesus Christ to the world to die for sinners. "And for this he came, so that every man believed in him, who was sent by God" (John 6:29). The Bible teaches that salvation is only obtained because of faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the object of that faith. This salvation is known as the statement "Justified by faith. Paul explained this teaching in each of his writings. This teaching of justification by faith has been repeatedly denied by some people who disagree with Paul's opinion. The history of the church from the early centuries to the present has proven the variety of understandings that have emerged from this teaching, but one important thing is that sinful humans are justified by their faith in Jesus Christ before God.Keywords: Paul;history; justified by faith.AbstrakTidak ada seorang pun yang dapat dibenarkan di hadapan Allah karena telah melakukan perbuatan baik. Sebaik apa pun manusia, jika dia tidak percaya kepada Yesus Kristus, Anak Allah maka ia tidak akan selamat dari murka Allah yang akan datang. Tidak ada seorang pun manusia yang benar di hadapan Allah, dan tidak ada seorang manusia berdosa yang dapat menyelematkan dirinya sendiri dengan cara apa pun. Satu-satunya jalan keluar adalah dengan cara yang Allah telah berikan untuk masalah semua orang berdosa, yaitu dengan mengutus Yesus Kristus ke dunia untuk mati bagi orang berdosa. “Dan untuk itulah Dia datang, yaitu supaya setiap orang percaya kepada Dia, yang telah diutus oleh Allah” (Yohanes 6:29). Alkitab mengajarkan bahwa keselamatan hanya diperoleh karena iman kepada Yesus Kristus. Yesus Kristus adalah obyek iman tersebut. Keselamatan ini dikenal dengan pernyataan “Dibenarkan karena iman. Paulus menjelaskan ajaran ini dalam setiap tulisannya. Ajaran pembenaran oleh iman ini telah berulang kali disangkal oleh beberap orang yang tidak setuju dengan pendapat Paulus. Sejarah gereja mulai dari abad permulaan sampai pada masa sekarang ini telah membuktikan beragamnya pemahaman yang muncul terhadap ajaran ini, namun satu hal yang terpenting adalah bahwa manusia berdosa dibenarkan oleh iman mereka kepada Yesus Kristus di hadapan Allah.Kata Kunci: Paulus; sejarah; iman; dibenarkan oleh iman.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (01) ◽  
pp. 87-108
Author(s):  
Santosa Santosa

Looking at the historical flow of Islamic development in Indonesia as such, the author took an analysis that the future prospects of Islam in Indonesia have a great opportunity to continue to develop, be it in the fields of politics, economics, education, social, and culture. This can be seen from the history of Islam in Indonesia that continues to develop until now, this is the early stage of the emergence of awareness of the Indonesian nation of the importance of planting religious values in Indonesian society so that the Indonesian nation can meet the future not only with science and technology but also in the balance by IMTAQ.  The era of globalization in the 21st century that has begun at this time, Islam in Indonesia has apparently exerted a huge influence on the advancement of Islam in the world. Although the existence of Islam today is really faced with a fairly severe challenge that requires the involvement of various parties concerned. With regard to this, strategic efforts need to be made, among others: by providing knowledge, skills, and piety in all fields (religious, political, economic, social, cultural, educational) so as to give birth to creative, innovative, independent and productive people considering the world to come is a competitive world. Keywords: Islam, The Future, Indonesia


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Peck ◽  
Stephen M. Rowland

ABSTRACT Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807–1894) was a British scientific illustrator and sculptor who illustrated many British exploration reports in the 1830s and 1840s. In the early 1850s, Hawkins was commissioned to create life-size, concrete sculptures of Iguanodon, ichthyosaurs, and other extinct animals for a permanent exhibition in south London. They were the first large sculptures of extinct vertebrates ever made, and they are still on view today. Inspired by his success in England, Hawkins launched a lecture tour and working trip to North America in 1868. Soon after his arrival, he was commissioned to “undertake the resuscitation of a group of animals of the former periods of the American continent” for public display in New York City. Had it been built, this would have been the first paleontological museum in the world. As part of this ambitious project, with the assistance of the American paleontologist Joseph Leidy, Hawkins cast the bones of a recently discovered Hadrosaurus specimen and used them to construct the first articulated dinosaur skeleton ever put on display in a museum. It was unveiled at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in November 1868. Hawkins worked tirelessly on New York’s proposed “Paleozoic Museum” for two years, until his funding was cut by William “Boss” Tweed, the corrupt leader of the Tammany Hall political machine, who grew hostile to the project and abolished the Central Park Commission that had made it possible. When Hawkins defiantly continued to work, without funding, Tweed dispatched a gang of thugs to break into his studio and smash all of the sculptures and molds. Although Hawkins would create several copies of his articulated Hadrosaurus skeleton for other institutions, the prospect of building a grand museum of paleontology in America was forever destroyed by Tweed’s actions.


2001 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa M. Wilcox

“It seems to me, now,” reflected Troy Perry, four years after founding a successful new Protestant denomination, “that it must have been a matter of timing, and I think that it was fate, too! God chose me for my mission at a time when He knew the world would respond, once the need was made clear.” While the question of divine ordination is a bit outside the scholar's jurisdiction, the question of timing is a crucial one for historical inquiry, and Perry's remarks show an insightful awareness that the success of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC) was due in large part to timing. As with any successful religious group, however, the seeds of the UFMCC germinated, sprouted, and grew as a result of a multitude of interconnected factors, including both external back-ground factors in American society at large and internal factors within the UFMCC itself. This article relates the history and early growth of the UFMCC to this constellation of factors in order to gain a clearer understanding of both the denomination itself and the social changes of which it was an integral part.


2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Joel Cracraft

The Australian avifauna is one of the most biologically important in the world. For its size, it has the highest diversity and endemism of any continent. Importantly, as a key piece of Gondwana, it was at a crossroads for the early history of modern birds (Neornithes). Indeed, it has phylogenetically deep lineages of palaeognaths, galliforms, anseriforms, caprimulgiforms, parrots, and songbirds. Moreover, patterns of endemism and diversity are well-marked and provide a natural laboratory for the study of speciation and diversification. All of this is why studies of the systematics and taxonomy of Australian birds are so important, for without a clear understanding of the taxonomic limits of taxa and their relationships we cannot hope to make progress toward answering critical evolutionary questions. Nor can we provide the systematic framework for comparative studies in the organismal sciences, especially behaviour, ecology, and conservation biology.


Almost any position in academe has odd moments the sum of which can furnish a genuine contribution if they are productively used. My assistant Mrs Gail Ewald Scala used hers for a year to compile this index which had been suggested by Professor Howard B. Adelmann. It is our hope that it will prove of real assistance to scholars investigating the early history of the Royal Society, the activities of its members, and its and their relations with learned men both within and beyond the British Isles.


Perception ◽  
10.1068/p6263 ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (8) ◽  
pp. 1251-1259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renato Foschi ◽  
Matteo Leone

According to the commonly accepted view, Galileo Galilei devised in 1638 an experiment that seemed able to show that the velocity of light is finite. An analysis of archival material shows that two decades later members of the Florence scientific society Accademia del Cimento followed Galileo guidelines by actually attempting to measure the velocity of light and suggesting improvements. This analysis also reveals a fundamental difference between Galileo's and Florence academy's methodologies and that Galileo's experiment was, in some respects, a pioneering work affecting also the history of the psychology of perception.


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