Immutability

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Leftow
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Change ◽  
First Cause

The doctrine of divine immutability consists in the assertion that God cannot undergo real change. Plato and Boethius infer divine immutability from God’s perfection, Aristotle from God’s being the first cause of change, Augustine from God’s having created time. Aquinas derives divine immutability from God’s simplicity, his having no parts or attributes which are distinct from himself. All of these arguments finally appeal to aspects of God’s perfection; thus, the doctrine of divine immutability grew from a convergence of intuitions about perfection. These intuitions dominated Western thought about God well into the nineteenth century. The doctrine’s foes argue that God’s power, providence and knowledge require its rejection. Their arguments contend that since the world does in fact change through time, this must entail change in God. If God responds to changing historical circumstances and to prayers, that would seem to require some sort of change in him (from not responding to responding). And if he does not intervene to prevent a war, for example, then after the war, he will have lost the power to prevent it (assuming, as many do, that God cannot alter the past), so again there is a change of state. Finally, it is argued that God’s knowledge of tensed truths (for example, ‘it is now noon’) must change as what time ‘now’ is changes. Some responses to these arguments appeal to the claim that God is in some sense outside time.

Background and Foreground: Getting Things in Context

1987 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Knight
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Information Retrieval ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
The World ◽  
Exact Reproduction ◽  
The 1960S

Historians generally grumble at the liberties taken with letters and papers by editors and biographers in the past, while reviewers may complain at the professorial pomposities which interfere with the reader's interaction with the text. Certainly, reading is not a mere matter of information retrieval or of source-mining, but a meeting of minds, and any over-zealous editing which makes this more difficult will have failed. Editors, whether of journals or of documents, are midwives of ideas—self-effacingly bringing an author's meaning and style into the world. What reviewers praise is the unobtrusive, and what they damn is ‘a manner at once slapdash and intrusive’, making allowances perhaps for an ‘introduction which is as admirable as his footnotes are useless’. When in the 1960s new technology brought us a flood of facsimile reprints of scientific works, some avoided these problems by appearing naked and unashamed: but for a text on phrenology, or for Goethe's Theory of Colours, a fig leaf or two of commentary is really necessary to help the innocent reader to interact with the book. Facsimiles of nineteenth-century editions of Wilkins' papers, of some Newton correspondence, or of Henry More's poetry are even more problematic; the reader should know that these editors' assumptions cannot be taken for granted, and that their introductions are themselves historical documents. The exact reproduction of misprints and misbindings (giving pages out of order and misnumbered) is of dubious assistance to the modern reader.

Laissez-faire Theory in Presidential Messages during the Nineteenth Century

1941 ◽  
Vol 1 (S1) ◽  
pp. 86-95
Author(s):  
R. M. Havens
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Industrial Nation ◽  
American People ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
The World ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
American Way

During the past decade the rapid spread of governmental activities into new fields and their extension within the fields that had previously been entered have increased the attention always given to the question of the legitimate sphere of activity for the Federal Government. There has been a widespread assumption that throughout the nineteenth century with only insignificant exceptions this country followed a policy of laissez-faire. From this assumption many people have proceeded to argue that in the past decade the American people have suddenly turned from the tradition which made this the greatest industrial nation of the world and have adopted a course which leads away from the “American way of life.”

The World-Revealing Goblet: Reading Farhād Mīrzā’s Geographical Treatise Jām-i Jam as a Lithograph

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 409-449
Author(s):  
Zeinab Azarbadegan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Persian Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
University Library ◽  
Political Networks ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Geographic Knowledge ◽  
The World

Abstract This article examines a copy of Farhād Mīrzā’s Jām-i Jam (the World-Revealing Goblet) published in 1856 in Tehran and kept at Columbia University Library offsite storage. It demonstrates the dual importance of this book in geographic knowledge production and as part of the library of Saʿīd Nafīsī, one of the most prominent Iranian scholars of Persian literature. Methodologically, the paper offers various ways to study a single lithograph to decipher larger historical processes in histories of education, translation, and print. First, it analyzes the paratext to expose scholarly and political networks in order to examine the genealogy of geographic knowledge production in mid-nineteenth century Qajar Iran. Second, it studies the content and translation practices employed by Farhād Mīrzā to offer novel strategies for analyzing dissemination and reception of new ways of production and categorization of geographic knowledge as well as methods utilized in composition of pedagogical geography books. Finally, it discusses how cataloging practices affect current scholarship and lead to rendering certain texts “hidden.” It therefore illustrates how the study of Farhād Mīrzā’s Jām-i Jam, a book aspiring to reveal the world, can expose much about scholarly practices not only in the past but also the present.

William Webb Ellis and the Origins of Rugby Football: The Life and Death of a Victorian Myth

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Four Corners ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Foreign Competitors

In the sense that myth is a reordering of various random elements into an intelligible, useful pattern, a structuring of the past in terms of present priorities, nineteenth-century Englishmen were inveterate myth-makers. As liberal and scientific thought shook the foundations of belief, the Victorians erected gothic spires as monuments to a medieval order of supposedly simple, strong faith. While their industrial masses languished, they extolled the virtues of self-made men. Confronted with foreign competitors and rebellious colonials, they instinctively asserted the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. In classic myth-making style, the Victorians set about “reorganizing traditional components in the face of new circumstances or, correlatively, in reorganizing new, imported components in the light of tradition.”Myth not only serves self-validating ends; it also provides a cohesive rationale, a fulcrum propelling people towards great achievements. If the Victorians were confident and self-congratulatory, they had cause to be: their material, intellectual, and political accomplishments were many. Not the least of their successes was in the sphere of sports and games, a subject often ignored by historians. Especially in the development of ball games—Association and Rugby football, cricket, lawn tennis, and golf—the Victorians modernized old games, created new ones, and exported them all to the four corners of the earth. Stereotyped as overly-serious folk, they in fact “taught the world to play.”Since sport, more than most forms of human activity, lends itself to myth-making, it is not surprising to find a myth emerging among the late-Victorians having to do with the origins of Rugby football. Like baseball's Doubleday myth, the tale of William Webb Ellis inspiring the distinctive game of rugby is a period piece, reflecting more of the era which gave it birth than of the event to which it referred.

The Whig Interpretation of the Welfare State

1989 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas E. Ashford
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social History ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Welfare State

Butterfield's well-known warning to historians may hold important lessons for the analysis of the contemporary welfare state. In his view, the Whig historians distorted history by interpreting the past in terms of the present. They allowed themselves to become “dispensers of moral judgments” by dividing the world into the friends and enemies of progress. Many contemporary explanations of welfare states pose the same problem, not so much because social science intentionally excludes the past, but because the search for rigorous empirical explanations of our present choices and accomplishments is divorced from the past. As Himmelfarb noted in her comments on the study of social history, the investigations of this intricate transformation of nineteenth-century liberal states are now virtually “two cultures.”

Nationality and liberty, protestant and catholic: Robert Southey’s Book of the Church

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 409-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheridan Gilley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Human Race ◽  
English History ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

The Victorian liberal Roman catholic historian lord Acton thought that the history of the world was one of the growth of liberty. By liberty, he meant national independence and freedom of speech and worship, the liberties of nineteenth-century liberalism: and in his conception of the past, he drew on the whig interpretation of English history as a conflict between a progressive tradition and a reactionary one: between churches, parties and classes representing either freedom or authority. The classic statement of the idea is the whig lord Macaulay’s in 1835:Each of those great and ever-memorable struggles, Saxon against Norman, Villein against Lord, Protestant against Papist, Roundhead against Cavalier, Dissenter against Churchman, Manchester against Old Sarum, was, in its own order and season, a struggle, on the result of which were staked the dearest interests of the human race; and every man who, in the contest which, in his time, divided our country distinguished himself on the right side, is entitled to our gratitude and respect.

Ibsen, Theatre, and the Ideology of Modernism

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toril Moi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
The World ◽  
State Of Affairs

Over the past generation, literary critics and theatre scholars in the United States have not been overly interested in Ibsen, widely considered a fuddy-duddy old realist who never truly became modern. The fact that his plays are still performed all over the world has had little effect on scholarly opinion. This is a deplorable state of affairs, for Ibsen is a major writer of modernity on a par with Baudelaire, and Flaubert. He is also unique among nineteenth-century writers for his clear-eyed and profound analysis of the relationships between women and men in modernity.

scholarly journals The Wilson family farm

SURG Journal ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-41
Author(s):  
Derek Murray
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Rural History ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
The University

Tradition versus modernity—and the spaces in between—is a major theme not only in the study, but also in the popular image of Canadian rural history. Our rural ancestors are often portrayed as self-sufficient, independent units. Closed off from market economies and providing everything they need on their own, they are models of an ideal, traditional and long-forgotten way of life. On the other hand, it is also possible that these people were market-oriented to the extent of solely producing staple crops for sale on lucrative foreign markets. I have had the opportunity to examine a rich historical source from the mid-nineteenth-century. The account book from the farm of James Wilson of North Dumfries, Ontario from 1866 to 1869 is one of many sources in the University of Guelph’s rural history archive that offers researchers a provocative glimpse of life in Canada in the past. The majority of this paper is devoted to the analysis of James Wilson’s account book itself and the world it reveals. It s in these spaces—in the worlds of which the Wilson farm is one example—that tradition and modernity become secondary to the mediating and motivating force of the needs of the individual, the family or the group. In the mid-nineteenth century the family was the main unit of economic, social and political agency for many people. James Wilson and his family were involved in local affairs at every level: economic, social, cultural, religious, political, etc. The world in which this family lived contained both traditional and modern elements. It was not the case that they blindly followed the traditions of the past, nor was it the case that they put all their faith in free-market economics or the values of modernity. The Wilson family lived between two extremes, with the needs and desires of the family being always paramount.

scholarly journals Keeping Count of the End of the World: A Statistical Analysis of the Historiography, Canonisation, and Historical Fluctuations of Anglophone Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Disaster Narratives

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Määttä
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Disaster Narratives ◽  
Literature And Film

Over the past decade, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic disaster narratives seem to have become more popular than ever before. Since its inception in secular form in the first decades of the nineteenth century, however, the genre has experienced a number of fluctuations in popularity, especially in the twentieth century. Inspired by Franco Moretti’s influential Graphs, Maps, Trees (2005), the aim of this study is to analyse the historiography, canonisation, and historical fluctuations of Anglo-phone apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic disaster narratives in literature and film through an elementary statistical analysis of previous surveys of the field. While the small database on which the study is based essentially consists of a meta-study of historiography and canonisation within the genre, disclosing which works have been considered to be the most important, the data is also used to assess the periods in which the most influential, innovative, and/or popular works were published or released. As an attempt is also made to explain some of the fluctuations in the popularity of the genre - with an eye to historical, cultural, medial, social, and political contexts – perhaps the study might help us understand why it is that we as a society seem to need these stories ever so often.

scholarly journals Biografia pochwalna z 9 maja 1801 roku. Lektura kontekstowa

2019 ◽  
pp. 140-161
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Dąbrowicz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Society Of Friends ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Extensive Collection

Comprehensive work on the history of nineteenth-century biographical texts has not been written yet and if it had, it would have to include the laudatory biographies practiced by Warsaw’s Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk (Society of Friends of Arts and Sciences). An extensive collection of them can be found in their yearbooks. This article’s object of interest is Pochwała Józefa Szymanowskiego [Praise of Józef Szymanowski] by Stanisław Kostka Potocki, which was oftentimes cited as an example of exorbitant rhetoric in the past. Widely w Knidos [Venus temple in Knidos] casts shadow on TPN’s entire biographical work. The critics of the aforementioned Pochwała Józefa Szymanowskiego completely overlooked a substantial part of it which could be recognized as the founding story of the organization conceived in the Prussian part of the partitioned Poland; one that was taking its first shaky steps in uncertain times when the situation in Europe and the rest of the world was changing on a daily basis. commented unearned praise of the translation of Świątynia Wenery w Knidos [Venus temple in Knidos] casts shadow on TPN’s entire biographical work. The critics of the aforementioned Pochwała Józefa Szymanowskiego completely overlooked a substantial part of it which could be recognized as the founding story of the organization conceived in the Prussian part of the partitioned Poland; one that was taking its first shaky steps inuncertain times when the situation in Europe and the rest of the world was changing on a daily basis.changing on a daily basis.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document