Knowledge From Underground: Leibniz Mines the Enlightenment

1997 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Hamm
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Administrative Work ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of Geology ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Mining Machinery ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Fantastic

The history of geology has focused largely on the foundations of geology in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Considerable attention has also been given to grand theories of the earth, or cosmogonies, of the seventeenth century. This approach has left out most of eighteenth-century mineralogy; it has also left out mining. The argument here is that Leibniz's Protogaea is best understood in the context of the Harz mines, where Leibniz spent considerable energy doing administrative work and inventing new mining machinery. By looking to the mines we not only make sense of Protogaea, but of most of German mineralogy in the eighteenth century. J. G. Lehmann, J. F. W. Charpentier, C. G. Delius and many other practitioners working in and around mines were deeply concerned with mapping the subterranean structure of the earth's crust and they contrasted their work with the "fantastic" world of theorists. The Freiberg Mining Academy, other institutions, and the way vocabularies of mining changed will also be considered. Finally there are some concluding thoughts on why mining has almost disappeared from the history of geology.

A ‘milky mass’ and ‘uniform material’: white marble in eighteenth-century French discourses on sculpture and geology

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-225
Author(s):  
Marthe Kretzschmar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Grain Size ◽  
Denis Diderot ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
White Marble ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Network

Knowledge of the materiality of stone during the Enlightenment expanded following the exploration of mineralogical structure, to alter ideas about taxonomy and challenge the role of rocks in the history of the earth. Close studies of the material of marble sculpture generated expertise on grain size, surface varieties and stone deposits. This mode of reception became intertwined with contemporary controversies about the age of the earth. This article focuses on both French sculpture and geological discourses of the eighteenth century to reveal an international and interdisciplinary network centring on protagonists such as Denis Diderot, Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach and Étienne-Maurice Falconet; through these figures, debates can be connected concerning both geology and art theory. Within these contexts, the article discusses the translation processes between these artistic and geological interests.

HOW THE STOICS BECAME ATHEISTS

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER BROOKE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
The Way

In the middle of the seventeenth century, scholarship on ancient Stoicism generally understood it to be a form of theism. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Stoicism was widely (though not universally) reckoned a variety of atheism, both by its critics and by those more favourably disposed to its claims. This article describes this transition, the catalyst for which was the controversy surrounding Spinoza's philosophy, and which was shaped above all by contemporary transformations in the historiography of philosophy. Particular attention is paid to the roles in this story played by Thomas Gataker, Ralph Cudworth, J. F. Buddeus, Jean Barbeyrac, and J. L. Mosheim, whose contributions collectively helped to shape the way in which Stoicism was presented in two of the leading reference works of the Enlightenment, J. J. Brucker's Critical History of Philosophy and the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert.

The Enlightenment

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-206
Author(s):  
Tomás McAuley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Musical Harmony ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mechanical Approach ◽  
Modes Of Interaction

This chapter traces the history of music and philosophy in the Enlightenment, with a particular focus on English thinkers in the years 1660–1750. It identifies three modes of interaction between musical and philosophical ideas: music as object of philosophy, music as inspiration for philosophy, and music as corroboration for philosophy. The chapter hones in particularly on the significance of the new, “mechanical” approach to philosophy that emerged in the later seventeenth century and on changing explanations of music’s fabled ability to cure the bite of the tarantula. Through all of this, it uncovers how ideas about musical harmony and music’s affective power were intertwined in this period. It also includes two eighteenth-century case studies showing how these ideas played themselves out in the French “high” Enlightenment and in German Idealist philosophy at the close of the Enlightenment. The chapter closes with an examination of the relative merits, in this context, of the terms “Baroque,” “scientific revolution,” and “Enlightenment.”

The Appeal of the Fantastic and the Improbable in Late Eighteenth-Century Children's Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-91
Author(s):  
Hossein Nazari ◽  
Maryam Khorasani
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Kenneth Burke ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Pocket Book ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
Children's Stories

Eighteenth-century children's authors implicitly exploited the fantastic and the improbable aspects of fairy tales to complement the persuasiveness of their moralistic teachings. Whereas the coexistence of chapbook residue with middle-class pedagogy in eighteenth-century children's books has already been underlined in scholarly studies, little critical attention has been paid to the rhetorical effects exercised by the incorporation of the fantastic and the improbable in eighteenth-century children's stories. Through appealing to the audience's collective imagination, eighteenth-century children's authors both derived from and built upon a set of common aspirations shared by a middle-class audience, thus cultivating a sense of what Kenneth Burke termed consubstantiality among the readers. Focussing on John Newbery's A Little Pretty Pocket-Book (1744), The History of Goody Two-Shoes (1765), and Maria Edgeworth's ‘The Orphans’ (1796), this study explores the modus operandi through which late-eighteenth-century children's authors sought to communicate serious messages by employing improbable plotlines.

Reamker (Rāmakerti), the Cambodian version of the Rāmāyaṇa. a review article

1989 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. E. Marrison
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Review Article ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
Critical Notes

Mrs. Jacob has provided us with a translation, for the first time in English, of the most important text in classical Cambodian literature, with an introduction and critical notes and lists, which will be of great help to anyone studying the Cambodian text. The Cambodian Rāmāyaṇa was composed anonymously by at least three authors over three centuries, and is divided into two parts. The earliest writer, of the sixteenth century, accounts for about a fifth of the first part, covering the main events of the Bālakāṇḍa and Ayodhyakāṇḍa. It was continued in the seventeenth century with the story up to Rāvaṇa's assembling the remnants of his army for the final battle with Rāma: but Rāvaṇa's death, the rescue of Sītā and her trial by fire, and the triumphant return to Ayodhya, are all missing. The second part of the Cambodian Rāmāyaṇa relates those events from the Uttarakāṇḍa which deal specifically with the later history of Rāma and Sītā: her second rejection and exile, the birth of their two sons, the meeting again, and Sītā's going down into the earth. This part is believed to have been composed in the eighteenth century.

Intellectual Change before the Enlightenment: Scotland, the Netherlands and the Reception of Cartesian Thought, 1650–1700

2015 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Raffe
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
United Provinces

This article argues that intellectual historians' fascination with a narrative of the emerging Scottish enlightenment has led to a neglect of ideas that did not shape enlightenment culture. As a contribution to a less teleological intellectual history of Scotland, the article examines the reception of the philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650). Cartesian thought enjoyed a brief period of popularity from the 1670s to the 1690s but appeared outdated by the mid-eighteenth century. Debates about Cartesianism illustrate the ways in which late seventeenth-century Scottish intellectual life was conditioned by the rivalry between presbyterians and episcopalians, and by fears that new philosophy would undermine christianity. Moreover, the reception of Cartesian thought exemplifies intellectual connections between Scotland and the Netherlands. Not only did Descartes' philosophy win its first supporters in the United Provinces, but the Dutch Republic also provided the arguments employed by the main Scottish critics of Cartesianism. In this period the Netherlands was both a source of philosophical innovation and of conservative reaction to intellectual change.

“The Anatomy of the Earth”—A Seventeenth-century Cosmogony

1934 ◽  
Vol 71 (12) ◽  
pp. 541-547 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. J. North
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Earth Structure ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of Geology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Writers

THE theories of earth-formation and earth-structure of which the seventeenth century was so prolific, are illustrated in the works of Woodward and Burnett, of Ray and Steno, and others who are usually cited when the history of geology is being discussed, but occasionally one meets with a cosmogony that seems to have remained unnoticed by subsequent writers. In such cases the neglect is, no doubt, to be attributed to the fact that some of the views put forward were too preposterous to command serious consideration even in days when speculation and credulity were more rife than observation and common sense: and if a book was not discussed by contemporary writers it would, in all probability soon join the limbo of things forgotten. This seems to have been the fate of a little pamphlet entitled The Anatomy of the Earth, written by Thomas Robinson, Rector of Ousby, in Cumberland, and “printed for J. Newton, at the Three Pigeons in Fleet Street” in 1694.

The meaning of ceraunia: archaeology, natural history and the interpretation of prehistoric stone artefacts in the eighteenth century

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW R. GOODRUM
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museums ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of

Historians of archaeology have noted that prehistoric stone artefacts were first identified as such during the seventeenth century, and a great deal has been written about the formulation of the idea of a Stone Age in the nineteenth century. Much less attention has been devoted to the study of prehistoric artefacts during the eighteenth century. Yet it was during this time that researchers first began systematically to collect, classify and interpret the cultural and historical meaning of these objects as archaeological specimens rather than geological specimens. These investigations were conducted within the broader context of eighteenth-century antiquarianism and natural history. As a result, they offer an opportunity to trace the interrelationships that existed between the natural sciences and the science of prehistoric archaeology, which demonstrates that geological theories of the history of the earth, ethnographic observations of ‘savage peoples’ and natural history museums all played important roles in the interpretation of prehistoric stone implements during the eighteenth century.

Mr. von Mohl’s Term of Art

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Meierhenrich
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Legal Development ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

The German idea of the Rechtsstaat has revolutionary origins. Robert von Mohl crafted it under the influence of the Enlightenment. This chapter tells a brief history of the idea of the Rechtsstaat in Germany. It traces the evolution of the term from its emergence in the late eighteenth century until 1933. Its intellectual trajectory raises questions about the long-run consequences of legal development in modern Germany. It sets the stage for the analysis in the next chapter of the term’s manipulation by legal theorists in Nazi Germany.

‘The Age of Louis XIV’: Frederick the Great and French Ways of War*

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-46
Author(s):  
Adam L Storring
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cultural Influence ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
French Military ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Military

Abstract This article demonstrates that the military ideas of King Frederick the Great of Prussia up to the Seven Years War (1756–1763) were primarily inspired by France, and particularly by the towering figure of King Louis XIV. It examines the intellectual inspirations for Frederick’s military ideas, showing that French military influence reflected the strength of French cultural influence in the long eighteenth century and the importance of Louis XIV as a model for monarchical self-representation. Frederick’s famous personal command of his armies reflected the Enlightenment concept of the ‘great man’ (grand homme), but Frederick thereby sought primarily to outdo the Sun King, whom Voltaire had criticized for merely accompanying his armies while his generals won battles for him. The example of Frederick thus demonstrates that not only rulers but also enlightened philosophers often looked backwards toward older monarchical examples. Frederick sought to create his own ‘Age of Louis XIV’ in the military sphere by imitating the great French generals of the Sun King. Frederick’s famous outflanking manoeuvres followed the example of famous French generals, reflecting the practice of the more mobile armies of the mid-seventeenth century. Frederick used French practice to justify his attacks with the bayonet, and his ‘short and lively’ wars reflected French strategic traditions. The evidence of French influence on Frederick seriously challenges concepts of a ‘German Way of War’, and indeed of supposed national ‘ways of war’ in general, emphasizing the need for a transnational approach to the history of military thought.

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