Part of the educational system in England has been geared towards the preparation of particular professions, while the identity and status of members of some professions have depended significantly on the general education they have received. Originally published in 1973, this volume explores the interaction between education and the professions. It also looks at the education of the main professions in sixteenth century England and at how twentieth century university teaching is a key profession for the training of new recruits (...) to other professions. (shrink)

The publication of the article “Recent Models of the African Iron Age and the Cattle-Related Evidence” by Hromnik in a journal sponsored by Unesco raises a number of serious issues which we, as members of the International Scientific Committee charged with the responsibility of preparing an up-to-date and scientific history of Africa purged of its mists of racist propaganda, unfounded assertions and misleading and dangerous misinterpretations, cannot ignore. These issues include the scientific accuracy or authenticity of the article.

"The role of logic in the Middle Ages. Regarding the role of logic within the framework of arts and sciences during the Middle Ages, we have to distinguish two related aspects, one institutional and the other scientific. As to the first aspect, we have to remember that the medieval educational system was based on the seven liberal arts, which were divided into the trivium, i.e., three arts of language, and the quadrivium, i.e., four mathematical arts. The so-called trivial arts were (...) grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and during a period of several centuries virtually every educated person, at least every university graduate, received a training in these matters, especially in logic. Students in the medieval faculty of arts probably spent more time studying logic than any other discipline. This first -- institutional -- aspect concerning the role of logic is explained by the second -- scientific -- aspect. The trivial disciplines provided techniques of analysis and a technical vocabulary that permeate philosophical, scientific and theological writings. Logic, as mentioned before, was referred to and was generally regarded as the art of arts and the science of sciences. The increasing cultural dominance of the universities with their obligatory disputationes and their hierarchy of examinations on the one hand and the outstanding status of logic on the other were corresponding features of the educational world of the 13th century. The core of the logic curriculum from the 12th century onwards was provided by the logical works of Aristotle. These represented the material for the study of types of predication, the analysis of simple propositions or statements (2) and their relations of inference and equivalence, the analysis of modal propositions, of the structure and the types of the syllogism, dialectical topics, fallacies and scientific reasoning as based on the demonstrative syllogism. Medieval logicians, however, realized that there were other, non-Aristotelian, approaches to logical subjects, questions and methods that could be investigated.. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

On the fiftieth anniversary of Philosophy and Rhetoric I hope a future for the journal that not only continues to publish scholarship that reflects seriously on the productive possibilities of putting the unique understandings of the human condition delivered by philosophy into contact with the singular insights into the power and perils of speech, writing, and gesture offered up by rhetoric. I also wish for it printed pages on which scholars engage thoughtfully the challenges posed by worlds and loss of (...) worlds. Never before in my lifetime has this task seemed so urgent and so necessary. This article is delivered in that spirit.On 13 July 2013 a jury of six women in Sanford, Florida, returned a verdict of not... (shrink)

Richard Peters argued for a general education based largely on the study of truth-seeking subjects for its own sake. His arguments have long been acknowledged as problematic. There are also difficulties with Paul Hirst's arguments for a liberal education, which in part overlap with Peters'. Where justification fails, can historical explanation illuminate? Peters was influenced by the prevailing idea that a secondary education should be based on traditional, largely knowledge-orientated subjects, pursued for intrinsic as well as practical ends. Does history (...) reveal good reasons for this view? The view itself has roots going back to the 16th century and the educational tradition of radical Protestantism. Religious arguments to do with restoring the image of an omniscient God in man made good sense, within their own terms, of an encyclopaedic approach to education. As these faded in prominence after 1800, old curricular patterns persisted in the drive for ‘middle-class schools’, and new, less plausible justifications grew in salience. These were based first on faculty psychology and later on the psychology of individual differences. The essay relates the views of Peters and Hirst to these historical arguments, asking how far their writings show traces of the religious argument mentioned, and how their views on education and the development of mind relate to the psychological arguments. (shrink)

The classic logical positivist account of historical explanation, putting forward what is variously called the "regularity interpretation" (#Gardiner, The Nature of Historical Explanation), the "covering law model" (#Dray, Laws and Explanation in History), or the "deductive model" (Michael #Scriven, "Truisms as Grounds for Historical Explanations"). See also #Danto, Narration and Knowledge, for further criticisms of the model. Hempel formalizes historical explanation as involving (a) statements of determining (initial and boundary) conditions for the event to be explained, and (b) statements of (...) general laws that imply that whenever events of the kind described in (a) occur, an event of the kind to be explained will take place. He admits that in practice historians rarely explain historical events in this way, but instead give only fragmentary "explanation sketches." Such sketches can, however, be "scientifically acceptable," providing it points to where "more specific statements" are to be found (351). An interesting aspect of the article is its "late" positivist, proto‑Kuhnian assertion that "the separation of 'pure description' and 'hypothetical generalization and theory construction' in empirical science is unwarranted" (356). But Hempel does not work out the wider implications of this important conclusion. It is also worth noting that he himself was not much interested in the philosophy of history; other authors took up his model and discussed it within that context. Usefully discussed by #Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:112‑17. (shrink)

This paper explores how the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis (GCH) arose from Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis in the work of Peirce, Jourdain, Hausdorff, Tarski, and how GCH was used up to Gödel's relative consistency result.

Fundamento. La historia de la Neurocirugía en el territorio está estrechamente relacionada con la de otras especialidades como la Cirugía General y la Ortopedia. Tiene sus primeras referencias establecidas en la etapa colonial en el Hospital General, documentadas en el Boletín del Colegio Médico de Camagüey. Objetivo es resaltar la importancia que tuvieron el Hospital General y el Colegio Médico de Camagüey con su boletín en la historia de la Neurocirugía y la Ortopedia. Método. Es una investigación histórica que se (...) basa en la revisión documental y utiliza el submétodo cronológico para establecer el orden de los hechos que se describen. Desarrollo. El Hospital General a partir de su reconstrucción a finales del siglo XIX, se convirtió en el principal centro médico quirúrgico de la provincia en la época colonial. Muchos de los resultados de la actividad asistencial y científica de sus médicos apareció publicada en el Boletín del Colegio Médico de Camagüey, prestigiosa revista científica que se encargó de divulgar los resultados de la medicina camagüeyana y donde aparecen artículos que evidencian cómo cirujanos generales realizaron las primeras intervenciones neuroquirúrgicas y ortopédicas. Conclusiones. Se consideran al Hospital General y al Colegio Médico de Camagüey y su boletín, como elementos indispensables al escribir la historiografía de la Neurocirugía y la Ortopedia en el territorio. Ground: the history of Neurosurgery in this place is closely linked to other specialties like General Surgery and Orthopedics. The first documented references went back to the colonial period in the General Hospital, documented in the bulletin of the medical college in Camagüey. The objective is to highlight the importance of the General Hospital and the medical college and its bulletin in the history of Neurosurgery and Orthopedics in Camagüey. Methods: This a historical investigation that was carried out taking documented revision and using chronologic sub method to establish the order of the facts that have been described. Development: Since the reconstruction of the General hospital at the end of the XIX century, it became the main medical_ surgical center in the province during the colonial period. Many of the scientific results and medical activities were published in the bulletin of the medical college, which became a well-known scientific magazine that was in charge of publishing the medical success in Camagüey. There are articles to prove that general surgeons performed the first neurosurgical and orthopedic interventions. Conclusions: The General hospital, the medical college and its bulletin are considered crucial elements to describe the history of Neurosurgery and Orthopedics in the territory. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Notes References.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the new revolutionary authorities in France made history one of the most important school subjects in their central schools. In order to teach this subject, the revolutionaries prescribed all teachers to use Claude-François-Xavier Millot's Élémens d’histoire générale (1772-1773). In this article, the characteristics that molded the narrative of this textbook will be analyzed. What form did the composition of this book, especially recommended because of its ‘philosophical plan’, take? How did its historiography relate (...) to that of other enlightened historians such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Mably or Goguet? And how was it that Millot's textbook was still considered useful for history teaching almost twenty years after its publication date? (shrink)

The covering-law model of historical explanation works only for explanation of particulars by particulars, or narrative questions and person and action questions. Wisdom suggests three other explanatory theories that may be integral to historical explanation. What are called Challengeable-cover laws, Function-type laws, and Theoretical-type explanations are introduced and their ranges with respect to covering laws described. The first type are non-trivial generalizations the historian forms where existing covering laws are irrelevant or insufficient, for isolated aspects of their subject matter. Function-type (...) explanatory laws are systemic and answer questions basic in the social sciences where they point beyond particulars to general functions of systems. Theory-type explanations, like Mary Douglas' explanation of taboos, involve theoretical entities or unobservables and operate analogously to theoretical explanations in the natural sciences. Historians often condense generalizations into concepts and treat them as particulars. History thus becomes generality-impregnated narrative. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Based upon the proceedings of the First International Conference on the History of General Relativity, held at Boston University's Osgood Hill Conference Center, North Andover, Massachusetts, 8-11 May 1986, this volume brings together essays by twelve prominent historians and philosophers of science and physicists. The topics range from the development of general relativity (John Norton, John Stachel) and its early reception (Carlo Cattani, Michelangelo De Maria, Anne Kox), through attempts to understand the physical implications of the theory (Jean Eisenstaedt, Peter (...) Havas) and to quantize it (Peter G. Bergmann), to elaborations of the theory into a unified theory of electromagnetism and gravitation (Vladimir P. Vizgin, Michel Biezunski), and considerations of its cosmological extensions (Pierre Kerszberg, George F.R. Ellis). This is the first volume to survey many of the most important questions in the history of general relativity, with many of the contributions drawing upon such original resources as the Einstein Archive. It is hoped that it will stimulate much-needed further research in this hitherto neglected area. (shrink)

The Warring States period was without doubt a time when reason thrived. The Confucians, Mohists, and Daoists, respectively, displayed three of its intellectual inclinations. One was reason with an exceptionally prominent moral flavor, and the cultivation of human character as its object. It calls on men to uphold the dignity, tranquillity, and loftiness of their inner selves. One was reason with a very strong practical flavor, and the realization of beneficent profit as its object. It leads men to address ways (...) of maintaining the stability of society, material wealth to support men's livelihoods, and individual survival. Apart from these two, there was reason that has spiritual transcendence and human immortality as its object, and which was manifested as a tendency toward anti-intellectualism. It tries to protect individual survival and freedom of the spirit, despite social pressures. As for those mystical ideas and techniques that seemed absurd, they gradually regressed into simplistic ceremonies, fables, and symbols among the cultural workers who pursued reason. The psychological attitude of "sacrificing to spirits as if they were present" led many cultural aristocrats to distance themselves from mystical ideas and techniques. Mysticism gradually disappeared from among men of culture, especially once it became increasingly difficult for those divination methods and technical arts, used merely to satisfy concrete needs, to avoid the scrutiny of reason. Some late Warring States period texts can help us understand the direction this way of thinking took. "Xian xue" in the Hanfeizi says,When the shaman priests pray for someone, they say, "May you live a thousand autumns and ten thousand years!" But the "thousand autumns and ten thousand years" are only a noise dinning on the ear: No one has ever proven [zheng] that such prayers add so much as a day to anyone"s life. For this reason people despise the shaman priests.". (shrink)

Si l’histoire et les sciences sociales ont connu une sorte de fusion au cours des dernières décennies et si de multiples domaines d’études spécialisées se sont affirmés pendant la même période, le registre durkheimien de la « sociologie générale » paraît aujourd’hui comme en friche. Il s’agit dans un premier temps d’analyser les conditions de cette désaffection et dans un second temps d’indiquer comment, par la voie d’une réflexivité de longue durée, on peut reformuler un agenda pour la sociologie générale.