Of the local movement of animals: The Wilkins Lecture, 1979

1980 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-153 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Small Measure ◽  
Local Movement ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Ideal

In this lecture dedicated to the memory of the Right Reverend John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, and one of the founding Fellows of the Royal Society, it is, I think, not entirely inappropriate to speak of the work of William Harvey, for in many ways the two men seem to have been alike. It is unlikely that they knew each other for they belonged to different generations (Harvey was 36 when Wilkins was born), and they were on opposite sides in the Civil War. But Wilkins was known for his tolerance and Harvey was ‘far from bigotry’, and neither of them was unmannerly or censorious. Wilkins was greatly esteemed as a person endowed with rare gifts, a lover of mankind and one who had delight in doing good. Harvey ‘excelled in civility towards his fellows, in constancy towards his friends, in justice towards all’ (1). They were both great observers of natural things. Both honoured Aristotle, but both were prepared to disagree with him when observation proved his statements incorrect. Both believed that experientia , personal experience, is the only way to acquire knowledge and both deplored the laziness of those who were content to accept the opinions of the past rather than seek out the truth by the interrogation of Nature herself, as if all knowledge had been revealed to the Ancients and no secrets were left undisclosed. Both were possessed of a restless desire to investigate these secrets and both brought imagination and a capacity for logical argument to the understanding and interpretation of their observations. Because this attitude of mind, so clearly demonstrated in Harvey’s own works, was the ideal of the Royal Society, it is, I think, permissible to suggest that Harvey’s example was in no small measure the source of its inspiration. Of those six ‘worthy Persons, inquisitive into Natural Philosophy and other parts of Humane Learning’, who first met in 1645 to pursue all manner of ‘Philosophical Inquiries’ (2), only John Wilkins cannot be directly linked with Harvey.

scholarly journals Nuets responsivitet – når det fremmede og det uperfekte setter premissen! Et filosofisk essay om musikalsk improvisasjon

2020 ◽  
pp. 285-299
Author(s):  
Karette Stensæth ◽  
Bjørn Kruse
Keyword(s):  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Therapeutic Practice ◽  
The Past ◽  
Random Impulses ◽  
Musical Improvisation ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
The Right ◽  
Early Interaction ◽  
The Ideal

As we improvise in music and become increasingly engrossed in the activity, we are intuitively engaged in a playful negotiation of various aesthetic possibilities in the Now. We are in a state where random impulses and irrational, unintentional actions become key premise providers along with everything we have learned through knowledge and experience. This essay reflects on the responsiveness of the Now in musical improvisation. We ask: What does the experience of the Now offer? Does it come with any kind of ethics and accountability and, if so, what kind and to whom does it apply? In our elaborations we are influenced by our own experiences of, and reflections on, compositional and music therapeutic practice. We refer to the theory of musical improvisation and early interaction, and also philosophical texts, especially those by Mikhail Bakhtin. We suggest that the responsiveness of the Now in musical improvisation is a mindset that challenges us both ethically and aesthetically. It does so by seeking creative satisfaction, joy and insight, taking shape through sensory perception that is close to intuition, mimesis and imagination. Its meaning remains unfinalised and foreign to us. It is also risky and is situated on the boundary between music and performer, between performer and other performers, and between the past and future of our actions. The ideal is to strive for a Now that can be experienced as the right now but also as a Now that suits the responses we try to find room for when we improvise.

‘Philosophical’ grammar in John Wilkins’s ‘Essay’

1975 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Salmon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Real Character ◽  
Philosophical Language ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
Century Thought ◽  
Insight Into

Recent studies of John Wilkins, author ofAn essay towards a real character, and a philosophical language(1668) have examined aspects of his life and work which illustrate the modernity of his attitudes, both as a theologian, sympathetic to the ecumenical ideals of seventeenth-century reformers like John Amos Comenius (DeMott 1955, 1958), and as an amateur scientist enthusiastically engaged in forwarding the interests of natural philosophy in his involvement with the Royal Society. His linguistic work has, accordingly, been examined for its relevance to seventeenth-century thought and for evidence of its modernity; described by a twentieth-century scientist as “impressive” and as “a prodigious piece of work” (Andrade 1936:6, 7), theEssayhas been highly praised for its classification of reality (Vickery 1953:326, 342) and for its insight into phonetics and semantics (Linsky 1966:60). It has also, incidentally, been examined for the evidence it offers on seventeenth-century pronunciation (Dobson 1968).

Memory and Politics in Democratic Spain

2020 ◽  
pp. 46-61
Author(s):  
Omar G. Encarnación
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Right

This chapter explains the persistence of Spain’s ‘politics of forgetting’, a phenomenon revealed by the wilful intent to disremember the political memory of the violence of the Spanish Civil War and the human rights abuses of General Franco’s authoritarian regime. Looking beyond the traumas of the Civil War, the limits on transitional justice and truth-telling on the Franco regime imposed by a transition to democracy anchored on intra-elite pacts, and the conciliatory and forward-looking political culture that consolidated in the new democracy, this analysis emphasizes a decidedly less obvious explanation: the political uses of forgetting. Special attention is paid to how the absence of a reckoning with the past, protected politicians from both the right and the left from embarrassing and inconvenient political histories; facilitated the reinvention of the major political parties as democratic institutions; and lessened societal fears about repeating past historical mistakes. The conclusion of the chapter explains how the success of the current democratic regime, shifting public opinion about the past occasioned by greater awareness about the dark policies and legacies of the Franco regime, and generational change among Spain’s political class have in recent years diminished the political uses of forgetting. This, in turn, has allowed for a more honest treatment of the past in Spain’s public policies.

‘In the tents of the King as well as the Muses’

2021 ◽  
pp. 7-90
Author(s):  
Alastair Compston
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
History Of Medicine ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Muscular Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Major Figure

Chapter 1, ‘In the tents of the King as well as the Muses: The life and reputation of Thomas Willis’, starts with the reaction to Willis’s death, aged 54, in 1675. From there, an account is given of Willis’s childhood and education in Oxford and his activities supporting the Royalist cause during the Civil War. After training in medicine, Willis’s casebook, involvement with the Oxford Experimental Philosophical Club and the episode of Anne Greene, spared from dissection through resuscitation after judicial hanging, and his lectures as Sedleian professor of Natural Philosophy in Oxford, are described. After moving to London in 1667, Willis was in demand as a physician and involved with the other Fellows of the Royal Society in reshaping ideas on respiration, fermentation, and muscular movement. The chapter ends with an analysis of the consolidation of Willis’s reputation as a major figure in the history of medicine.{146 words}

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Marcus Agrippa?

2019 ◽  
pp. 182-198
Author(s):  
James Tan
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Past ◽  
Right Hand ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Right

This chapter offers a reconsideration of Agrippa, usually seen as the “right-hand man” of Augustus. Traditional republican culture demanded that a victor of Agrippa’s accomplishments had to earn the highest stature, but only the most extraordinary honors could reflect Agrippa’s achievements. Much like Cn. Pompeius Magnus before him, he embraced this path, advertising his exceptionalism by declining conventional honors and pursuing extraordinary ones, yet also ostentatiously avoiding the sort of solipsistic ambition that had led to civil war in the past. The promotion of Agrippa to someone of unprecedented excellence also worked well for Augustus. By elevating the independent status of his partner, he increased the value of Agrippa’s endorsement of the status quo.

The Right Reverend John Wilkins, F. R. S

1960 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-56 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Private School ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
The Right

In the history of the Royal Society there have been certain instances of hereditary genius, but there can be few Fellows in whom the influence of both parental strains is seen so clearly as in John Wilkins. He was the son of Walter Wilkins, an Oxford citizen and goldsmith, of whom Aubrey says: ‘Mr Francis Potter knew him very well, and was wont to say was a very ingeniose man, and had a very Mechanicall head. He was much for Trying of Experiments, and his head ran much upon the perpetuall motion .’ (1) ‘He was born in 1614 at Fawsley, near Daventry, in Northamptonshire, in the House of the Reverend and well known Mr John Dodd, who writes upon the Commandments, he being his Grandfather by the Mother’s side. He was taught his Latin and Greek by Edward Sylvester, a noted Grecian, who kept a Private School in the Parish of All Saints in Oxford: His Proficiency was such, that at Thirteen Years of Age he entred a Student in New-Inn, in Easter-Term 1627. He made no long stay there, but was removed to Magdalen Hall, under the Tuition of Mr John Tombes and there he took his Degree in Arts in October 1631.

Ultrasound to Localize the Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter Tip Position in Newborn Infants

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao-Ling Ren ◽  
Hong-Lei Li ◽  
Jing Liu ◽  
Ya-Juan Chen ◽  
Man Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Newborn Infants ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Ultrasound Localization ◽  
The Past ◽  
Catheter Tip ◽  
Chest X Ray ◽  
Tip Position ◽  
The Right ◽  
Central Catheters ◽  
The Ideal

Objective To evaluate the application of ultrasound for the localization of the tip position of peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) in newborn infants. Study Design This study was a retrospective analysis on ultrasonic localization for PICC placement conducted in our department over the past 2 years. Ultrasonic localization was performed immediately after PICC placement in all neonatal patients. Successful PICC placement was confirmed if the PICC tip position was located at the inferior/superior cavoatrial junction. Chest X-ray localization was performed on 32 infants immediately after ultrasound examination to compare the accuracy of ultrasound localization. Results Of the 186 patients, 174 (93.5%) had successful PICC placement on the first attempt. In 11 (5.9%) patients, the catheter tip was placed beyond the ideal location as follows: too deep (in the right atrium) in 4 patients, too shallow in 4 patients, and malpositioned in 3 patients. Both the sensitivity and the specificity of ultrasound for identifying PICC tip localization were 100%. Complications occurred in 2.7% of this group of patients. Conclusion Ultrasonic localization of the PICC tip position is a timely, accurate, and reliable method and can identify the catheter tip with high accuracy. This method could be widely applied in neonatal wards.

Old ideas, not new ones, are the key to education — and democracy

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (5) ◽  
pp. 38-41
Author(s):  
Derek W. Black
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Early Years ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The Past ◽  
A Priority ◽  
The Right ◽  
The U.S

In a time when both American democracy and U.S. public schools appear to be in crisis, Derek Black argues that the best way forward is to look to the past at the ideals that the founding fathers espoused in the early years of the nation. Although early U.S. leaders placed a priority on expanding public education, Black explains that these ideals have not always been perfectly put into practice. But education has lived alongside the right to vote as a defining feature of the American democracy, so much so that it was one of the principal aims of newly freed slaves during and after the U.S. Civil War. Yet recent efforts in some states to privatize schools show that democracy’s advances are not irreversible and that the nation must continually return to the founding principles that have guided the nation thus far.

Martin Folkes, Antiquary

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-236
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
The Past

Chapter six continues the intellectual connections between Folkes’s and his contemporaries’ work in natural philosophy, natural history and antiquarianism via two case studies involving Folkes’s work in numismatics and in the Egyptian Society. Just as Folkes promoted Newtonianism, his writing of his Table of Gold and Silver Coins reflected his allegiance to his mentor Newton, Master of the Royal Mint, as his editing did of Newton’s biblical chronologies. Royal Society Fellows were also deriving metrological standards and tables of specific gravities of metals, so these concerns dovetailed in Folkes’s work on the English coinage. Use of material culture to reconstruct the past was inherent to antiquarianism and to natural philosophy at the Royal Society. Fellows attended experimental demonstrations from which axiomatic principles were formulated via discursive practice; members could also access this material by the reading of reports of experiments. The Egyptian Society to which Folkes belonged (1741–3) had the same methodology, to discover principles of sociocultural and religious practices in Egypt, as well as to provide ‘object biographies’ of artefacts that belonged to members that they examined with speculations on their manufacture and use, for instance of ancient enamels and pigments, as well as the practice of mummification.

scholarly journals Robert Dahl and the Right to Workplace Democracy

2001 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Economic Democracy ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic Citizen ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Ideal

Do employees possess a moral right to democratic voice at work? In A Preface To Economic Democracy and other writings over the past two decades, Robert Dahl has developed a neo-Kantian proof for the existence of such a right. Even if we accept the norm of distributive justice upon which Dahl founds his proof, voluntary subjection to authoritarian power in firms does not violate the legitimate entitlements of employees. While adult residents of territorial associations do possess a moral right to political equality, polities and firms are qualitatively different types of associations in which the entitlements of subjects are distinct. Subjection to power is acquired in different ways in the two kinds of associations, and this difference deprives employees—but not residents—of a right to democratic voice as a matter of moral desert.Throughout his career, Robert Dahl has been troubled by the different ways in which those who govern polities and firms are chosen in modern society. While democracy is the norm in the state, at least in the advanced industrial nations, authoritarianism prevails in the economy. Most employees are subject to managers they did not elect and to rules in which they had little or no say. They are subordinates, a role manifestly at odds with the ideal of the democratic citizen. Given the “contradictions between our commitment to the democratic ideal and the theory and practice of hierarchy in our daily lives,”

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