scholarly journals Rocks, skulls and materialism: geology and phrenology in late-Georgian Belfast

2017 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-55
Author(s):  
Jonathan Jeffrey Wright ◽  
Diarmid A. Finnegan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Scientific Naturalism ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Town ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

Recent years have seen the development of a more nuanced understanding of the emergence of scientific naturalism in the nineteenth century. It has become apparent that scientific naturalism did not emerge sui generis in the years following the publication of Charles Darwin's On the origin of species (1859), but was present, if only in incipient form, much earlier in the century. Building on recent scholarship, this article adopts a geographically focused approach and explores debates about geology and phrenology—two of the diverse forms of knowledge that contributed to scientific naturalism—in late-Georgian Belfast. Having provided the venue for John Tyndall's infamous 1874 address as president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Belfast occupies a central place in the story of nineteenth-century scientific naturalism. However, in uncovering the intricate and surprising ways in which scientific knowledge gained, or was denied, epistemic and civic credibility in Belfast, this discussion will demonstrate that naturalism, materialism and the relationship between science and religion were matters of public debate in the town long before Tyndall's intervention.

‘Each Song Was Just Like a Little Sermon’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac Land
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Military Training ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
National Pride ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter is central to the volume’s chronological contentions, as its argument accounts for the specialized, one-dimensional Dibdin of ‘Tom Bowling’ that has endured into recent scholarship. Focusing on Dibdin’s posthumous reception, it examines the moral and rhetorical difficulties of repackaging Dibdin’s works for a Victorian sensibility; it explores the specifics of mid-century concert culture previously highlighted by Derek Scott and William Weber as central to changes in nineteenth-century taste and programming; and it develops the theme of nostalgia into a revelatory consideration of the relationship between new naval technologies, national pride, and military training, and the songs, people, and language of a remembered Napoleonic ‘golden age’—to which Dibdin proves to have been as central, in the Victorian imagination, as Nelson.

'The Ceaseless Labour of Your Life': Occupations and Wages in Holyhead, 1841–81

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 562-593
Author(s):  
Gareth Huws
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Irish Sea ◽  
Employment Patterns ◽  
The Irish Sea ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Town

The relationship between Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century has been extensively studied, but the crucial significance of the London-Dublin communications link in this relationship has received less attention from historians. This article concentrates on the effect of establishing and maintaining this link on the strategically-placed town of Holyhead and, more specifically, how employment patterns in the town changed as Holyhead became the main mail packet port for the Irish Sea crossing.

Preaching at the British Association for the Advancement of Science: sermons, secularization and the rhetoric of conflict in the 1870s

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
CIARAN TOAL
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
British Association ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Association Meeting ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractMuch attention has been given to the science–religion controversies attached to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, from the infamous 1860 Huxley–Wilberforce debate at Oxford to John Tyndall's 1874 ‘Belfast Address’. Despite this, almost no attention has been given to the vast homiletic literature preached during the British Association meetings throughout the nineteenth century. During an association meeting the surrounding churches and halls were packed with men of science, as local and visiting preachers sermonized on the relationship between science and religion. These sermons are revealing, particularly in the 1870s when the ‘conflict thesis’ gained momentum. In this context, this paper analyses the rhetoric of conflict in the sermons preached during the meetings of the association, exploring how science–religion conflict was framed and understood through time. Moreover, it is argued that attention to the geography of the Sunday activities of the British Association provides insight into the complex dynamic of nineteenth-century secularization.

‘Learning the Lakes’: Harriet Martineau's A Complete Guide to the English Lakes and Pedestrian Authority

Romanticism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-108
Author(s):  
Kerri Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rapid Recovery ◽  
Literary Authority ◽  
Lake District ◽  
Harriet Martineau ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

In 1845 Harriet Martineau experienced a rapid recovery from a debilitating but mysterious illness that had kept her house-bound for half a decade. She measured her increasing health by the miles she was able to walk, and rapidly found herself capable of considerable distances. Shortly after she moved to the Lake District. Here she set about consolidating her recovery and becoming acquainted with her new home by walking hundreds of miles across the whole area. These walks would be the basis for her guides to the Lakes, first a series of essays published in ‘A Year at Ambleside’ in 1850, then A Complete Guide to the English Lakes in 1855. This essay places Martineau's Lakeland guides in the broader context of nineteenth-century tourism, especially the picturesque guidebooks that recent scholarship has demonstrated both responded to and shaped the way visitors understood the area. Martineau's guides, unusual for being female-authored, offer, I argue, suggestive ways of further developing our understanding of the relationship between genre, place and literary authority during the mid-century Lakeland tourist boom.

The Age of Enlightenment in Russia

2019 ◽  
pp. 14-25
Author(s):  
Teresa Obolevitch
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
The Other ◽  
Russian Philosophy ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
Science And Theology ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 2 tackles the relationship between science and religion in the eighteenth century known as the Age of Enlightenment. The state policy of Westernization which was promoted chiefly by Peter I and Catherine II caused an immensely expansive spread of scientific knowledge and, in consequence, resulted in the first attempts to establish a relationship between science and theology. The chapter analyses this problem from both scientific and theological perspectives. First of all, in the eighteenth century the Russian Academy of Sciences was opened and Russian philosophy at that time tried to interpret scientific data in accordance with theological truths. Yet, on the other hand, a number of Orthodox theologians highlighted the limitation of scientific knowledge. This chapter analyzes the thought of Michael Lomonosov, Gregory Skovoroda, Theophan Prokopovich, and others representatives of the Russian Age of Enlightenment.

Suffragist Artists in Partnership

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Ella Rose
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Female Figures ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Relationship

This book explores the interconnected creative partnerships of the Wattses and the De Morgans: Victorian artists, writers and suffragists. The couples were close friends and collaborators. The study demonstrates how Mary and George Watts, and Evelyn and William De Morgan worked, individually and together, to support greater gender equality and female liberation in the nineteenth century. The author traces their relationship to early and more recent feminism, reclaiming them as influential early feminists and reading their works from twentieth-century theoretical perspectives. By focusing on neglected female figures in creative partnerships, the book challenges longstanding perceptions of them as the subordinate wives of famous Victorian artists and of their marriages as representative of the traditional gender binary. This is also the first academic critical study of Mary Watts’s recently published diaries, Evelyn De Morgan’s unpublished writings, and other previously unexplored archival material by the Wattses and the De Morgans. It offers a more nuanced understanding of power relations between the sexes as well as of the relationship between feminism, literature and art in the period.

Science and Religion

2020 ◽  
pp. 386-408
Author(s):  
Bennett Zon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Introductory Section ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Century Science

While nineteenth-century science and religion are commonly portrayed as being at war, this chapter uses musical contexts to test an alternative hypothesis: that science and religion were in fact compatible. It does that by tracking Anglo-European ideological changes in scientific and religious discourse, and explaining how music absorbed and reflected those changes across intellectually reciprocal environments. An introductory section outlines key scientific and religious changes from pre- and post-Darwinian evolutionary formulations to nineteenth-century theologies of divine emotion. Three further sections investigate the relationship of science and religion to the musical body, mind, and soul, emphasizing concepts of sensation and the voice; consciousness and feeling; and mystery and emotion.

History in the Classroom An Undisciplined Subject

2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (01) ◽  
pp. 173-184
Author(s):  
Laurence De Cock
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pedagogic Knowledge ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This paper argues that a discipline taught in schools is more than a mere copy of scientific knowledge. It investigates the relationship between scholarly and pedagogic knowledge from the end of the nineteenth century, when the teaching of history was tasked with participating in the construction of a shared national culture. In fact, it is only by mobilizing tools from the social sciences that the complexity of history teaching can be understood. The repeated accusations directed at the teaching of history in schools therefore reflect a trite and hackneyed understanding of its nature and mission.

The Churches and society in nineteenth-century England: a rural perspective

1972 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 267-276
Author(s):  
David M. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Church Attendance ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Natural Increase ◽  
Urban Churches ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Cultural Shock ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Town

In recent years discussion of the relationship between the Churches and society in nineteenth-century England has concentrated on a topic that very much concerned contemporaries: the absence of the working classes from public worship. Much stress has been laid on the parlous position of the Churches in the towns, particularly the large towns where the proportion of the population attending church was lowest and where the working classes, however defined, were most numerous. Because on average church attendance was better in the countryside, and because it is known that the growth of urban population owed more to migration than natural increase before 1851, it has been suggested that the transition made by migrants from a rural to an urban society may explain the difficulties experienced by the urban churches in attracting worshippers. Modern research has shown that church attendance is one of the habits likely to be dropped by migrants; and thus it is suggested that migrants coming from the countryside where church attendance was normal dropped the habit as part of the ‘cultural shock’ of the move to the very different social life of the town.

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