ABSTRACT This paper examines the rise and fall of the British popular microscopy movement during the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. It highlights that what is currently understood as microscopy was actually two inter-related but distinct communities and argues that the recognized collapse of microscopical societies in the closing decades of the nineteenth century was the result of amateur specialization. It finds the roots of popular microscopy in the Working Men’s College movement and highlights how microscopy adopted (...) its Christian Socialist pedagogy of equality and fraternity, resulting in a radical scientific movement that both prized and encouraged publication by its amateur adherents, who often occupied the middle and working classes. It studies the taxonomic boundaries of this popular microscopy, particularly focusing on its relationship with the study of cryptogams or ‘lower plants’. It explores how its success combined with its radical approach to publication and self-sufficiency created the conditions for its collapse, as devotees established a range of successor communities that had tighter taxonomic bounds. Finally, it shows how the philosophy and practices of popular microscopy continued in these successor communities, focusing on the British expression of mycology, the study of fungi. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley has assured us that where all is bad it must be good to know the worst. In the case before us the worst is that Jonathan Edwards, from whatever perspective he is viewed, represents an imposing enigma. I confess at the outset that the enigma is one I am unable entirely to dispel, although I am confident that I can explain what is enigmatic about his thought, his approach, his caste of mind, and that I can do (...) so "not through a glass darkly." The central problem is this: Edwards, on the one hand, accepted totally the tradition established by the Reformers with respect to the absolute primacy and authority of the Bible, and he could approach the biblical writings with that conviction of their inerrancy and literal truth which one usually associates with Protestant fundamentalism. On the other hand, Edwards insisted vigorously on the criteria of reason and experience, and he was without equal on the American scene up to the time of Charles Peirce in his capacity for philosophical analysis, for sustaining a logical argument, and for expressing his conclusions with the most painstaking attention to subtle nuances of meaning and rhetorical effectiveness. Moreover, he insisted on the use of philosophical concepts and principles in considering the "things of religion" and his speculations about creation, his estheticism, and pantheism caused deep anxiety in the minds of traditional Calvinists, whose theology was as literal as their biblical exegesis. This double-barrelled character of his approach has led critics to define him as a reactionary and "medieval" thinker who had lost touch with those currents of thought which would eventually lead to the "modern" point of view. Without pausing to evaluate that charge at this point, one thing at least is clear: in relation to his contemporaries Edwards was alone in his attempt to make the religious tradition intelligible in those philosophical terms first laid down by Augustine and Anselm in their enterprise of "faith seeking understanding.". (shrink)

Studies in philosophy: I. Tufts, J.H. On moral evolution. II. Willcos, W.F. The expansion of Europe in its influence upon population. III. Woods, R.A. Democracy a new unfolding of human power. IV. Sharp, F.C. An analysis of the moral judgment. V. Woodbridge, F.J.E. The problem of consciousness. VI. Norton, E.L. The intellectual element in music. VII. Raub, W.L. Pragmatism and Kantianism. VIII. Lyman, E.W. The influence of pragmatism upon the status of theology.--Studies in psychology: IX. Delabarre, E.B. Influence of surrounding (...) objects on the apparent direction of a line. X. Swift, E.J. Beginning a language; a contribution to the psychology of learning. XI. Pierce, A.H. An appeal from the prevailing doctrine of a detached subconsciousness. XII. Woodworth, R.S. The cause of a voluntary movement. XIII. Burnett, C.T. An experimental test of the classical theory of volition. (shrink)

The volume contains studies by eleven distinguished scholars, concerning changes in ethical and religious consciousness during this important era of Western ...

Introduction.--pt. I. The demonology of Thomas Aquinas.--pt. II. Thomas Aquinas as mediator between earlier and later beliefs.--Conclusion.--Bibliography (p. 185-188).

Charles Trinkaus can be counted among the eminent intellectual and cultural historians of the Renaissance. This new collection of his articles brings together pieces published since 1982. The studies are concerned with Italian Renaissance humanists and philosophers who tended to affirm human capacities to shape earthly existence, despite the traditional limitations proposed by some scholastics and astrologers. Professor Trinkaus holds that, without abandoning their Christian faith, or their acceptance of physical influences from the cosmos, these writers, in their stress (...) on human capacities, were responding to the vigorous activism of their contemporaries in all aspects of their existence. The final four papers also provide a series of reflections on the modern historiography of the Renaissance. (shrink)

Spinoza and modern thought, by Lawson P. Chambers.-- Existence and value, by George R. Dodson.-- The realm of necessity, by Charles E. Cory.