Based on his published works and on manuscripts that were unpublished during his lifetime, C. F. Wolff's views on variability and heredity are analyzed. Attention is focused on his treatise Objecta meditationum pro theoria monstrorum published in 1973. The findings do not completely coincide with B. E. Rajkov's conclusions as to Wolff's anticipation of some theses of modern genetics and the theory of evolution. In addition, the case for the transformism elements in Wolff's work is argued. Lastly, Wolff's misunderstanding of (...) inheritance phenomena is attributed to his erroneous idea of the essence of sexual reproduction. (shrink)

What role does the wild duck play in Ibsen's famous drama? I argue that, besides mirroring the fate of the human cast members, the duck is acting as animal subject in a quasi-experiment, conducted in a private setting. Analysed from this perspective, the play allows us to discern the epistemological and ethical dimensions of the new scientific animal practice (systematic observation of animal behaviour under artificial conditions) emerging precesely at that time. Ibsen's play stages the clash between a scientific and (...) a romantic understanding of animals that still constitutes the backdrop of most contemporary debates over animals in research. Whereas the scientific understanding reduces the animal's behaviour, as well as its environment, to discrete and modifiable elements, the romantic view regards animals as being at one with (or violently disconnected from) their natural surroundings. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 199-201.

Alison Denham examines the ways in which our engagement with literary art, and metaphorical discourse in particular, informs our moral beliefs. She considers to what extent moral and metaphorical discourses are capable of truth or falsehood, warrant or justification, and how it is that we understand these discourses. This vital new study offers a fresh view of the nature of the moral and the metaphorical, and the relations between art and morality.

Believing that there is still something to be said about the early history of clausulae in Latin prose, I set myself to trace the practice of the early orators, then that of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, accepting its conventional dating to 86–82 B.C., and lastly that of Cicero in De Inventione, assuming it to be roughly contemporary with the ad Herennium, and in his early speeches. But clausula-study itself, besides shedding light on the methods of composition used by the still (...) unidentifiable Auctor ad Herennium, cast doubts on the conventional dating of his work. I gave a brief outline of my conclusions in C.R., N.S. vi , 134–6.1 propose to attempt here a detailed justification of those relating to the date of the work, with a few modifications of some points. (shrink)

So far his weapons of defence are taken from a common armoury; but in the next verses he develops the argumentum ad hominem which was foreshadowed in ‘eques’ and ‘intra fortunam qui cupis esse tuam.’ Such promptings, says he, come strangely from Maecenas, whose own discreetness and self-repression will be famous in history, and whom he is resolved, so far as in him lies, to imitate.

Both the author and the date of this five-volume poem, the first Western document to link the houses of the zodiac with the course of human affairs, are uncertain. The author's name may be Marcus Manilius, or Manlius, or Mallius, and the latest datable event mentioned in the books themselves is the disastrous defeat of Varus' Roman legions by the German tribes in 9 CE. The writing shows knowledge of the work of Lucretius, but the work is not referred to (...) by any subsequent writer, suggesting that it was never widely disseminated. A manuscript was rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1416 or 1417, and editions were produced by Scaliger and Bentley, but this immensely erudite edition of 1903–1930 by the scholar and poet A. E. Housman is regarded as authoritative. Volume 4 describes the influence of the zodiacal signs on the people born under them. (shrink)

Both the author and the date of this five-volume poem, the first Western document to link the houses of the zodiac with the course of human affairs, are uncertain. The author's name may be Marcus Manilius, or Manlius, or Mallius, and the latest datable event mentioned in the books themselves is the disastrous defeat of Varus' Roman legions by the German tribes in 9 CE. The writing shows knowledge of the work of Lucretius, but the work is not referred to (...) by any subsequent writer, suggesting that it was never widely disseminated. A manuscript was rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1416 or 1417, and a version was published by the astronomer Regiomontanus in 1473. Editions were later produced by Scaliger and Bentley, but this immensely erudite edition of 1903–30 by the scholar and poet A. E. Housman is regarded as authoritative. (shrink)

The 86 verses of Dorotheus printed at the end of Koechly's Manetho, 33 of which had already been published by Salmasius in his exercitationes Plinianae or his diatribae de annis climactericis, were edited by Iriarte from a scrap of manuscript at Madrid, into which they had been copied, as we now know, from the first book of the astrological treatise of Hephaestion of Thebes, who took Dorotheus for his chief authority. To these 86 verses nearly 300 more, by far the (...) most of which are preserved in the second and third books, still unpublished, of Hephaestion's work, have now been added, in the catalogus codicum astrologorum Graecorum vol. vi pp. 67 and 91–113, by Mr W. Kroll, the best editor they could have found ; a scholar who combines critical talent, knowledge of Greek, and knowledge of astrology, more happily than any of his associates, and who has emended much of the very corrupt text with conspicuous ability and success. A good many additional corrections, chiefly grammatical and metrical, have been made by Mr Ludwich in the Rheinisches Museum for 1904, pp. 42–54. (shrink)

Both the author and the date of this five-volume poem, the first Western document to link the houses of the zodiac with the course of human affairs, are uncertain. The author's name may be Marcus Manilius, or Manlius, or Mallius, and the latest datable event mentioned in the books themselves is the disastrous defeat of Varus' Roman legions by the German tribes in 9 CE. The writing shows knowledge of the work of Lucretius, but the work is not referred to (...) by any subsequent writer, suggesting that it was never widely disseminated. A manuscript was rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1416 or 1417, and editions were produced by Scaliger and Bentley, but this immensely erudite edition of 1903–1930 by the scholar and poet A. E. Housman is regarded as authoritative. Volume 4 describes the influence of the zodiacal signs on the people born under them. (shrink)

Both the author and the date of this five-volume poem, the first Western document to link the houses of the zodiac with the course of human affairs, are uncertain. The author's name may be Marcus Manilius, or Manlius, or Mallius, and the latest datable event mentioned in the books themselves is the disastrous defeat of Varus' Roman legions by the German tribes in 9 CE. The writing shows knowledge of the work of Lucretius, but the work is not referred to (...) by any subsequent writer, suggesting that it was never widely disseminated. A manuscript was rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1416 or 1417, and editions were produced by Scaliger and Bentley, but this immensely erudite edition of 1903–1930 by the scholar and poet A. E. Housman is regarded as authoritative. Volume 3 describes the working out of horoscopes. (shrink)