Translating the Concept of Experiment in the Late Eighteenth Century

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-97
Author(s):  
Eirini Goudarouli ◽  
Dimitris Petakos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Concepts ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Different Cultures

The Philosophical Grammar: Being a View of the Present State of Experimented Physiology, or Natural Philosophy, In Four Parts (1735) by Benjamin Martin was translated into Greek by Anthimos Gazis in 1799. According to the history of concepts, no political, social, or intellectual activity can occur without the establishment of a common vocabulary of basic concepts. By interfering in the linguistic structure, the act of translation may affect crucially the encounter of different cultures. By bringing together the history of science and the history of concepts, this article treats the transfer of the concept of experiment from the seventeenth-century British philosophical context to the eighteenth-century Greek-speaking intellectual context. The article focuses mainly on the different ways Gazis’s translation contributed to the construction of a particular conceptual framework for the appropriation of new knowledge.

Respectable Mistresses

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole von Germeten
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Sexually Active ◽  
History Of

This chapter begins with a quote from the celebrated seventeenth-century Mexico City Poet, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, highlighting the hypocritical intersection between gender and sexuality in this era. The focus here is on the legal history of eighteenth-century middle class women who retained a degree of public honor as they took part in sex work inside their homes.The confused eighteenth-century reactions by church, state, and neighbors to sexually active women often derived from increased opportunities for permitted or at least tolerated socializing between the sexes. These new social spaces challenged official ideas of public order and permissible gender interaction.

Music and the Origins of Ancient Science

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Pesic
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Arithmetic Geometry ◽  
Web Browsers ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
Ancient Science

Music entered deeply into the making of modern science because it was a crucial element of ancient natural philosophy, through which it thereafter remained active well into the formation of the “new philosophy” during the seventeenth century. The Pythagorean connection between music, numbers, and the sensual world remained potent in the quadrivium, the four-fold study of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music that was the centerpiece of higher education until about the eighteenth century. This chapter surveys the ongoing connection between music and its sister sciences in the quadrivium from Plato and the Pythagoreans to Nicomachus and Boethius. The mythical story of Pythagoras in the blacksmith shop arguably represents the earliest recorded experiment, in the later sense of that word. Ancient Greek distinctions between number and magnitude were crucial elements in the unfolding interaction between arithmetic, geometry, and music. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-147
Author(s):  
Stephen Menn ◽  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Medical Philosophy ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Academic Dissertations

The life of Anton Wilhelm Amo is summarized, with close attention to the archival documents that establish key moments in his biography. Next the history of Amo’s reception is considered, from the first summaries of his work in German periodicals during his lifetime, through his legacy in African nationalist thought in the twentieth century. Then the political and intellectual context at Halle is addressed, considering the likely influence on Amo’s work of Halle Pietism, of the local currents of medical philosophy as represented by Friedrich Hoffmann, and of legal thought as represented by Christian Thomasius. The legacy of major early modern philosophers, such as René Descartes and G. W. Leibniz, is also considered, in the aim of understanding how Amo himself might have understood them and how they might have shaped his work. Next a detailed analysis of the conventions of academic dissertations and disputations in early eighteenth-century Germany is provided, in order to better understand how these conventions give shape to Amo’s published works. Finally, ancient and modern debates on action and passion and on sensation are investigated, providing key context for the summary of the principal arguments of Amo’s two treatises, which are summarized in the final section of the introduction.

Negligence

2019 ◽  
pp. 427-450
Author(s):  
John Baker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
General Principle ◽  
Duty Of Care ◽  
Reasonable Care ◽  
History Of

This chapter traces the history of negligence in tort. The role of fault in the action of trespass vi et armis is somewhat speculative, since the relevant facts were hidden from courts by the plea of Not Guilty. But the concept of inevitable accident seems to be predicated on negligence. Negligence is more visible in actions on the case, though the earliest examples were contractual in essence. The first signs of a distinct tort of negligence, where there was no contract or custom imposing liability, appear in the seventeenth century, and in the next century there emerges a general principle that everyone must take reasonable care not to injure his neighbour. The duty of care was gradually enlarged between the eighteenth century and the present, especially with the removal of obstacles connected with the principle volenti non fit injuria and with the old notion that trespass would not lie for words.

Political Science

2018 ◽  
pp. 104-133
Author(s):  
Tita Chico
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Core ◽  
Gulliver's Travels ◽  
Experimental Project ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Philosophers

Late seventeenth-century natural philosophers inherited the conjunction of politics and science at the core of Francis Bacon’s experimental project. Thomas Sprat’s The History of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels use the conventions of literary knowledge to express their scientific-political visions, insisting that natural philosophy cannot be understood apart from the political institutions enabling and enabled by its practice and promulgation. These writers use the experimental imagination to envisage, in turn, civil government, absolutist monarchy, and imperialism. Sprat advances scientific triumphalism and a model for schooling gentlemen into civil society.

Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe Reloaded?

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann ◽  
Kathrin Kollmeier ◽  
Willibald Steinmetz ◽  
Philipp Sarasin ◽  
Alf Lüdtke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Concepts ◽  
Basic Concepts

Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe Reloaded? Writing the Conceptual History of the Twentieth Century Guest editors: Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann and Kathrin KollmeierIntroduction Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann and Kathrin KollmeierSome Thoughts on the History of Twentieth-Century German Basic Concepts Willibald SteinmetzIs a “History of Basic Concepts of the Twentieth Century“ Possible? A Polemic Philipp SarasinHistory of Concepts, New Edition: Suitable for a Better Understanding of Modern Times? Alf LüdtkeReply Christian Geulen

I PUNTI DI ZENONE: UNA PREISTORIA VICHIANA

Nuncius ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 378-425
Author(s):  
PAOLO ROSSI
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Strong Line ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
The Continuum

Abstracttitle SUMMARY /title This study considers the reasons for the radical incompatibility between atomist theses and the conclusions reached by the Council of Trent on the sacrament of the Eucharist. The texts of several seventeenth century Jesuits - Suarez, Pereira, Arriaga and Oviedo - are examined here. Present in these texts is an attempt to develop a natural philosophy alternative to the Aristotelian one, capable of retaining its distance from impious atomism, but, nonetheless, adopting certain central aspects concerning belief in discontinuity and indivisibles. A strong line of demarcation between Aristotelians and anti-Aristotelians can be traced through their differing conceptions of the continuum. Zenonism (which regards the continuum as composed of points) was defended on various occasions in the Jesuit context, and was also repressed and condemned a number of times. In the background to these problems, the atomism of Galileo is reconsidered, and the "atomism of points" described theoretically by Boscovich is examined. Even during the seventeenth century, however, mention was frequently made of a particular type of atomists who regarded atoms as without extension. Many Vico scholars regarded his profession of Zenonims (central to his De antiquissima of 1710) as a "philosophical invention of Vico". In reality, however, Vico had a Zenonist Jesuit as his teacher, and his entire discussion of "metaphysical points" is linked to a specific and very little known philosophical tradition. In the whole of Europe between the middle of the seventeenth century and the first decades of the eighteenth century, Zenonist was a term in common use, and was readly comprehensible, like Scotist, or, in more recent times, Popperian.

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.

scholarly journals Politeness in eighteenth-century drama: a discursive approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas H. Jucker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Communicative Acts ◽  
Restoration Drama ◽  
Testing Ground ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Good Behaviour

AbstractFictional texts constitute complex communicative acts between an author and an audience, and they regularly depict interactions between characters. Both levels are susceptible to an analysis of politeness. This is particularly true for early eighteenth-century drama, which – in the context of the age of politeness – established new dramatic genres to educate and edify their audiences. Characters were used to demonstrate good or bad behaviour as examples to be followed or avoided. Early eighteenth-century drama was a reaction against what was considered to be the immorality and profanity of Restoration drama of the seventeenth century. Two plays serve as illustrations and a testing ground for an analysis of fictional politeness that considers both communicative levels; the play itself and the interactions within the play. Richard Steele’s sentimental comedy “The Conscious Lovers” (1722) gives an example of good behaviour by being exceedingly polite to the audience in the theatre through characters that are exceedingly polite to each other; and George Lillo’s domestic tragedy “The London Merchant, or the History of George Barnwell” (1731) shows the “private woe” of everyday characters in order to warn the younger generation against wrongdoing and to propagate middle-class virtues and moral values.

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