This paper examines farmer intentions to adapt to global climate change by analyzing responses to a climate change scenario presented in a survey given to large-scale farmers across the US Corn Belt in 2012. Adaptive strategies are evaluated in the context of decision making and farmers’ intention to increase their use of three production practices promoted across the Corn Belt: no-till farming, cover crops, and tile drainage. This paper also provides a novel conceptual framework that bridges a typology of adaptation (...) with concepts that help predict intentionality in behavior change models. This conceptual framework was developed to facilitate examination of adaptive decision making in the context of agriculture. This research effort examines key factors that influence farmers’ intentions to increase their use of the practices evaluated given a climate change scenario. Twenty-two covariates are examined across three models developed for no-till farming, cover crops, and tile drainage. Findings highlight that farmers who believed they should adjust their practices to protect their farm from the negative impacts of increased weather variability were more likely to indicate that they would increase their use of each of the practices in response to climate change. Additionally, visiting with other farmers to observe their practices was positively associated with farmers’ intentions to increase their use of the adaptive strategies examined. Farmers who were currently using no-till farming, cover crops, and tile drainage were also more likely to plan to increase their use of these practices in response to increased weather variability associated with climate change. However, farmers who reported high levels of confidence in their current practices were less likely to plan on changing their use of these practices in response to climatic changes. (shrink)

In this article, I develop a conception of multiculturalism that is compatible with Mill's liberal framework. I argue, drawing from Mill's conception of the nation-state, that he would expect cultural minorities to assimilate fully into the political sphere of the dominant culture, but to assimilate only minimally, if at all, into the cultural sphere. I also argue that while Mill cannot permit cultural accommodations in the form of self-government rights, he would allow for certain accommodation rights which assist cultural minorities (...) in preserving their cultural particularity. While this is indeed a modest multiculturalism, it helps to demonstrate that Mill was not as hostile towards custom or minority groups as certain passages may appear to suggest. (shrink)

SummaryJohn Tyndall, Irish-born natural philosopher, completed his PhD at the University of Marburg in 1850 while starting his first substantial period of research into the phenomenon of diamagnetism. This paper provides a detailed analysis and evaluation of his contribution to the understanding of magnetism and of the impact of this work on establishing his own career and reputation; it was instrumental in his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1852 and as Professor of Natural Philosophy at (...) the Royal Institution in 1853. Tyndall's interactions and relationships with Michael Faraday, William Thomson, Julius Plücker and others are explored, alongside his contributions to experimental practice and to emerging theory. Tyndall's approach, challenging Faraday's developing field theory with a model of diamagnetic polarity and the effect of magnetic forces acting in couples, was based on his belief in the importance of underlying molecular structure, an idea which suffused his later work, for example in relation to the study of glaciers and to the interaction of substances with radiant heat. (shrink)

SUMMARYHow do glaciers move? This seemingly straightforward question provided the backdrop for a heated debate between the physicists John Tyndall (1820–1893) and James David Forbes (1809–1868) in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Forbes described the motion of glaciers as that of a viscous fluid. After visiting the Alps, Tyndall proposed an alternative theory that combined fracture and regelation. The glacial controversy ensued. Yet the debate was never simply about whether glaciers moved like honey, or if they (...) moved by continuously breaking and re-attaching. This paper shows that the glacial controversy formed an important prelude to the strategies used by the X-Club in reforming science and establishing cultural authority. There was a central difference in the way Forbes and Tyndall presented their scientific arguments. Tyndall and his allies used the changes in the periodical press as part of their strategy for establishing and maintaining cultural and scientific authority. By contrast, Forbes and his supporters, including the North British physicists, were not as quick to make use of this new medium. This paper, therefore, examines in detail the significance of these two publishing strategies in shaping the nature and results of the glacial controversy. (shrink)

This paper explores how the physicist John Tyndall transformed himself from humble surveyor and schoolmaster into an internationally applauded icon of science. Beginning with his appointment as Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution in 1853, I show how Tyndall’s worries about his social class and Irish origins, his painstaking attention to his lecturing performance and skilled use of the material and architectural resources of the Royal Institution were vital to his eventual success as a popular (...) expositor and ambassador for science. Secondly I explore the implications of Tyndall’s ‘popularity’ with respect to debates over the meaning and value of scientific ‘popularisation’. In support of recent work challenging diffusionist models of science communication, I show how Tyndall’s interactions with his audiences illustrate the symbiotic relationship between producer and consumer of ‘popular’ science. By examining the views of Tyndall’s critics—notably the ‘North British’ group of physicists—and his defenders and rivals in the domain of popular scientific lecturing, I show that disputes over Tyndall’s authority reflected anxieties about what constituted popular science and the transient boundaries between instruction and entertainment. The term ‘popularisation’ enjoyed many different uses in these debates, not least of all as a rheorical device with which to either exalt or destroy a scientist’s credibility. Author Keywords: John Tyndall; Audiences; Popularisation; Popular; Physics; Royal Institution. (shrink)

ABSTRACT One of the most influential imagined histories of science of the nineteenth century was John Tyndall's Belfast Address of 1874. In that address, Tyndall presented a sweeping history of science that focused on the attempt to understand the material nature of life. While the address has garnered attention for its discussion of the conflict at the centre of this history, namely between science and theology, less has been said about how Tyndall's history culminated with a (...) discussion of the evolutionary researches of Charles Darwin. Tyndall presented Darwin as a revolutionary scientific practitioner, whose virtues of patience, self-denial, and observation led him to his epochal theory of evolution and thus justified the extension of science into realms previously under the purview of theology. Tyndall was criticized at the time for his ‘vulgar admiration’ of a man of science who was still very much alive, and who could not possibly live up to such ‘fulsome adulation’. What such critics failed to realize, however, is that Tyndall had historicized the living Darwin within the context of his own philosophy of history that he cultivated years before, a philosophy that integrated the moral lives of heroic individuals within a progressive history of science itself. (shrink)

"You imagine where you cannot experiment"... John Tyndall is a 19th century Irish scientist and natural philosopher. For him, scientific imagination is thefaculty that enables scientists "to transcend the boundaries of the sense" and to connect the visible with the invisible - by forming mental images of phenomena, and tracing links among them. This article reconstructs his theory of scientific imagination, focusing on the central passages found in his works.

This essay examines the physicist John Tyndall’s journal writing in the mid-nineteenth century and focuses on how Tyndall used his journal during a series of transitions that occurred when he was a young man: when he went from being a surveyor to a public school instructor and then from a Ph.D. student and budding experimenter in Germany to Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution in London. As well as providing insight into these various transitions, the (...) journal more importantly shows how Tyndall developed a particular ethical conception of self, based on his readings of Carlyle, Emerson, and Fichte, and how that sense of self shaped—and was shaped by—his early experimental practices. Thus, the article is a case study in the development of a particular scientific self that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, whose novel claim to authority was based on a particular fusion of the ethical and the epistemological. (shrink)

William Tyndale, the Bible translator and Reformation martyr, enjoyed a sudden revival of interest in the mid-nineteenth century. This article examines one important aspect of his Victorian rehabilitation – his memorialization in stone and bronze. It analyses the campaigns to,erect two monuments in his honour – a tower on Nibley Knoll in Gloucestershire, inaugurated in 1866; and a statue in central London, on the Thames Embankment, unveiled in 1884. Both enjoyed wide support across the political and ecclesiastical spectrum of Protestantism, (...) and anti-Catholicism was especially prominent in the first initiative. Both monuments emphasized the blessings of the Bible in English, the importance of religious liberty, and the prosperity of England and the Empire as a result of its Reformation heritage. The article argues that controversy concerning Tractarianism and biblical criticism was brushed under the carpet, and Tyndales distinctive evangelical theology was deliberately downplayed, in order to present the martyr as a unifying figure attractive to a broad Protestant coalition. (shrink)

The subtitle of this work surely deserves a place on its cover. John Tyndall was a Victorian scientist remarkable for his experimental abilities, his wide range of interests in physics and his aggressive personality. He fought his way to a scientific career in London from humble beginnings as a surveyor, railroad engineer and schoolteacher. At his height, from the 1860s to the early 1880s, he juggled several different roles in addition to his principal appointment as professor of natural (...) philosophy at London’s Royal Institution, and added to his income with popular lectures and essays. He seems to have relished greatly both his friends and his enemies. This volume of essays particularly highlights these friends, showing the tight-knit and small world of Victorian science. But was this “the age of scientific naturalism”? This title alludes to the term made prominent over a generation ago in the work of historian Frank Turner, who .. (shrink)

Because Francis Galton (1822-1911) was a well-connected gentleman scientist with substantial private means, the importance of the role he played in the professionalization of the Victorian life-sciences has been considered anomalous. In contrast to the X-clubbers, he did not seem to have any personal need for the reforms his Darwinist colleagues were advocating. Nor for making common cause with individuals haling from social strata clearly inferior to his own. However, in this paper I argue that Galton quite realistically discerned in (...) the reforming endeavors of the 1860s, and beyond, the potential for considerably enhancing his own reputation and standing within both the scientific community and the broader Victorian culture. In addition, his professionalizing aspirations, and those of his reformist allies, were fully concordant with the interests, ambitions and perceived opportunities of his elite social group during the Victorian period. Professionalization appealed to gentlemen of Galton's status and financial security as much as it did to the likes of Thomas Huxley and John Tyndall, primarily because it promised to confer on the whole scientific enterprise an unprecedented level of social prestige. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is new in one sense but old in another. The new tradition starts with figures such as Code, Greco, Montmarquet, and Zagzebski. The old tradition has its pedigree in Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and their modern interpreters such as Anscombe and MacIntyre. Virtue epistemology recognizes that knowledge is something we value and that propositional knowledge requires intellectual virtues, that is to say, virtues as applied to the intellect. Although much pioneering work in the new tradition has been done on (...) propositional knowledge, comparatively little in it has been done on know-how. This is surprising, because one might naturally think of know-how as something to be refined into a skill, and virtues may be thought of as skills. In the modern epistemological tradition that does not take its direction from virtue ethics, propositional knowledge, as opposed to know-how, has received by far the bulk of the discussion, although since Ryle first argued that knowhow is not always propositional knowledge, there has been a fairly recent resurgence of interest in know-how.We value intellectual virtues because they are skills that promote our flourishing, both as individuals and as members of a community. The intellectual virtues are truth- seeking virtues and stem from a love of the truth. Since love is itself a virtue - indeed it was what Tyndale called the greatest Christian virtue before the King James translation renamed it as charity—it may be seen as the virtue that motivates all other intellectual virtues. A commitment to the truth is presupposed by any intellectual virtue. For example, logic is important to a community, and in particular to the intellectual community, not only because there are rules governing the activity of logic but also because there are those within the community who are trustworthy in following the activity and because there are publically accepted standards of accountability in the way the activity of logic is practiced. Here is how we will proceed. In section 2 we sketch a metaphysics of natural purposes that supports the claim that there are objective goods that beings need qua the kinds of being they are in order to flourish. In section 3 we argue that flourishing includes the acquisition of virtues. We give a general account of virtue, roughly as a stable disposition to act upon a habit elevated to a skill of putting one’s know-how into practice that springs from one’s motivation to pursue what one perceives as good. In section 4 we give a general sketch of intellectual virtues as truth-seeking virtues that stem from a love of the truth that are the skills to flourish intellectually. In section 5 we discuss connaturality, namely those specific metaphysical accidents readily acquired by beings due to their first nature. We make an original distinction between ontological connaturality, namely the connaturality that belongs to animals qua beings of a certain kind, and habitual connaturality, namely our first natures suffused with virtues—or vices, although we will concentrate only on virtues. Habitual connaturality is acquired through the practice of virtue and involves perceptiveness awakened by the possession of the virtue in question. The knowledge arising from this form of connaturality may be a form of know-how. In section 6 we give an account of connatural apprehension and connatural propositional knowledge. In section 7 we discuss connatural know-how and argue that it makes certain virtues possible. At this point we will have shown that intellectual and moral virtues are informed by know-how. In sections 8 and 9 we give analyses of know-how and skill in terms of counterfactual success. We show how skill is a refined form of know-how and how both know-how and skill are informed by moral and intellectual virtues. We conclude in section 10 that know-how informs intellectual and moral virtues in the sense that virtue is to be elucidated in terms of skill, which is in turn to be elucidated in terms of know-how. Moreover, virtues inform know-how in the sense that know-how is to be elucidated in terms of intellectual and moral virtues. No circularity arises because different virtues and different forms of know-how are involved. (shrink)

For nineteenth century British scientific naturalists like Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, and John Tyndall, translation, and the issues of language that it raised, were crucial. Dealing with these issues became a major part of their strategy to reform British science, and it involved opening up the scientific community to French and German research. Early in their careers, both Huxley and Tyndall invested time translating science books from the continent into English. Later, as they themselves wrote books (...) that were in demand across the channel, they, and Darwin, put a great deal of time and energy into locating the best possible translators for their writings. Translation was not only a key to reforming British science; it was also essential as a means of circulating the evolutionary worldview of scientific naturalism globally. But Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall were not fully prepared for the challenges they would encounter in authorizing translations of their own works. (shrink)

The central role played by Darwin's analogy between selection under domestication and that under nature has been adequately appreciated, but I have indicated how important the domesticated organisms also were to other elements of Darwin's theory of evolution-his recognition of “the constant principle of change,” for instance, of the imperfection of adaptation, and of the extent of variation in nature. The further development of his theory and its presentation to the public likewise hinged on frequent reference to domesticates.We have seen (...) that Darwin's reliance on the analogy between domesticated varieties and wild species was a bold and original step, in light of contemporary views on the nature of domesticates. However, as Darwin undoubtedly foresaw, his reliance on the analogy created difficulties as well as solving problems, and these began with his Malthusian codiscoverer of the principle of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace's paper “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” presented to the Linnean Scoiety along with the first public unveiling of Darwin's theory, states: We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the observation of those occurring among domestic animals. The two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature.62Much has been made of the similarity of views of Darwin and Wallace, but this quotation surely reveals how utterly different their views were on what to Darwin was an important matter. Several critics of the Origin saw Darwin's reliance on the domesticates as his Achilles heel. As Young has pointed out, Samuel Wilberforce included the following passage in his attack on the Origin: Nor must we pass over unnoticed the transference of the argument from the domesticated to the untamed animals. Assuming that man as the selector can do much in a limited time, Mr. Darwin argues that Nature, a more powerful, a more continuous power, working over vastly extended ranges of time, can do more. But why should Nature, so uniform and persistent in all her operations, tend in this instance to change? Why should she become a selector of varieties?63Another critic, Fleeming Jenkin, found the analogy a weakness in Darwin's theory because of the limited extent of variation in any one direction in domestic animals and plants.64 We have already seen that Darwin had confided a similar view to his notebook thirty years earlier, but changed his mind as a result of his profound study of domesticates. De Beer's reference to “an English country gentleman's knowledge of domestic plants and animals and their breeding”65 fails totally to recognize the originality and depth of Darwin's knowledge of domesticates.Why did Darwin, against the currents of his time, rely so heavily on mankind's experience with domesticated organisms to shape his theory about species in nature? On reason is that only with domesticates was an approach that came close to experimental verification possible. Darwin fully realized the inadequacies of the experiment, as is emphasized by his repeated contrasting of selection under nature and selection by man. Yet the extensive experience and data of plant and animal breeders offered the only reliable base against which Darwin could continually challenge his views. As he wrote in the introduction to Variation, with domestication, “man ... may be said to have been trying an experiment on a gigantic scale.”66 Given Darwin's high opinion of the quantitative work of Malthus and Quetelet (as emphasized by Schweber),67 and his unremitting efforts to secure data by which to test his theories, it was inevitable that he should attach high significance to domesticated varieties. John Tyndall, in his Belfast address of 1874, said: “The strength of the doctrine of Evolution consists, not in experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific thought.”68 Darwin would have agreed with the latter thought, but I think he would have challenged the preceding one on the grounds that long experience with domesticated varieties did provide an element of experimental demonstration. It gave him confidence in his theory, and he used his vast knowledge of artificial selection boldly and creatively. (shrink)

Henry Charlton Bastian's support for spontaneous generation is shown to have developed from his commitment to the new evolutionary science of Darwin, Spencer, Huxley and Tyndall. Tracing Bastian's early career development shows that he was one of the most talented rising young stars among the Darwinians in the 1860s. His argument for a logically necessary link between evolution and spontaneous generation was widely believed among those sympathetic to Darwin's ideas. Spontaneous generation implied materialism to many, however, and it had (...) associations in Britain with radical politics and amateur science. Huxley and the X Club were trying to create a public posture of Darwinism that kept it at arm's length from those negative associations. Thus, the conflict that developed when Huxley and the X Club opposed Bastian was at least as much about factional in-fighting among the Darwinians as it was about the experiments under dispute. Huxley's strategy to defeat Bastian and define his position as "non-Darwinian" contributed significantly to the shaping of Huxley's famous address "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis." Rhetorically separating Darwinism from Bastian was thus responsible for Huxley's first clear public statement that a naturalistic origin of life was compatible with Darwin's ideas, but only in the earth's distant past. The final separation of the discourse on the meaning of Brownian movement and "active molecules" from any possible link with spontaneous generation also grew out of Huxley's strategy to defeat Bastian. Clashes between Bastian and the X Club are described at the BAAS, the Royal Society, and in the pages of "Nature" and other journals. (shrink)

The encroachment of globalization and demands for greater regional autonomy have had a profound effect on the way we picture Ireland. This challenging new look at the key of sovereignty asks us how we should think about the identity of a postnationalist' Ireland. Richard Kearney goes to the heart of the conflict over demand for communal identity - traditionally expressed by nationalism, and the demand for a universal model of citizenship - traditionally expressed by republicanism. In so doing, he asks (...) us to question whether the sacrosanct concept of absolute national sovereignty is becoming a luxury ill afforded in the emerging new Europe. Kearney then takes us beyond the political with chapters on the influence of philosophers such as George Berkeley, John Toland and John Tyndall and looks at some of the myths in Irish poetry and nationhood. Postnationalist Ireland provides a recasting of contemporary Irish politics, culture, literature and philosophy and will appeal to students of these subjects and Irish studies in general. (shrink)

Summary Popular science journalism flourished in the 1860s in England, with many new journals being projected. The time was ripe, Victorian men of science believed, for an ?organ of science? to provide a means of communication between specialties, and between men of science and the public. New formats were tried as new purposes emerged. Popular science journalism became less recreational and educational. Editorial commentary and reviewing the progress of science became more important. The analysis here emphasizes those aspects of popular (...) science which have been identified by Frank Turner as ?public science? and by Thomas Gieryn as ?boundary-work?. The religious, intellectual, and utilitarian values claimed for science by editors and contributors in their tasks of persuading the public to support science and of distinguishing science from what they often called ?applied science? are discussed. These values are shown to vary among editors and, for the editors examined here, Shirley Hibberd, Henry Slack, James Samuelson, William Crookes, and Henry Lawson, to differ significantly from those of T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, and Norman Lockyer, on whom much study of the popularization of science in the 1860s has focused. (shrink)

Back in the early 1960s, Karl Rahner acknowledged that ‘religious agnosticism’ did have “some truth” in it [meint etwas Richtiges]. On the Hegelian assumption that a thing being defined involves as much what it is not, as what it is, this paper will explore in what sense Rahner thought that religious agnosticism does contain an element of truth, by contrasting his interpretation of its component parts to that of the nineteenth century agnostic trio of Herbert Spencer, Thomas H. Huxley, and (...) John Tyndall. (shrink)

Boston Monday Lectures: Biology, a book of popular essays by the American orator Joseph Cook first published in 1879, was derived from a successful lecture series at Boston's Tremont Temple in 1878 that expertly synthesised the scientific scholarship of the day for public consumption and attempted to show that science was in harmony with religion and the Bible. Writing with clarity and conveying excitement to the lay audiences who flocked to hear him, Cook's lectures became extremely popular around the world. (...) Biology focuses on evolution, immortality and materialism. In 13 lectures, Cook discusses topics including T. H. Huxley and John Tyndall's ideas on evolution, Rudolf Hermann Lotze's thoughts on theism, and microscopy. Cook's lectures on immortality all begin with 'Does Death End All?' before probing further into a philosophical aspect of immortality. Cook interjects short essays, which he calls 'preludes', on subjects as diverse as political patronage and Daniel Webster's death. (shrink)

Throughout his career the geographer, and first reader in the ‘new’ geography at the University of Oxford, Halford Mackinder (1861–1947) described his discipline as a branch of physics. This essay explores this feature of Mackinder's thought and presents the connections between him and the Royal Institution professor of natural philosophy John Tyndall (1820–1893). My reframing of Mackinder's geography demonstrates that the academic professionalization of geography owed as much to the methods and instruments of popular natural philosophy and physics (...) as it did to theories of Darwinian natural selection. In tracing the parallels between Tyndall and Mackinder, and their shared emphasis upon the technology of the magic lantern and the imagination as tools of scientific investigation and education, the article elucidates their common pedagogical practices. Mackinder's disciplinary vision was expressed in practices of visualization, and in metaphors inspired by physics, to audiences of geographers and geography teachers in the early twentieth century. Together, these features of Mackinder's geography demonstrate his role as a popularizer of science and extend the temporal and spatial resonance of Tyndall's natural philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Keeping Philosophy in Mind:Shadworth H. Hodgson's Articulation of the Boundaries of Philosophy and ScienceThomas W. StaleyIntroductionShadworth H. Hodgson's (1832–1912) contributions to Victorian intellectual discourse have faded from prominence over the past century. However, despite his current anonymity, Hodgson's case is important to an understanding of the historical split between philosophy and science in late nineteenth century Britain. In particular, his example illuminates the specific role played by developing concepts (...) of the mind in a period of deep transition in the British intellectual community. His virtual disappearance from the record, I contend, is indicative also of the disappearance of his form of philosophy as a vital social project. His ideas, rather than being rejected, were instead largely neglected—they became lost as philosophical discussion moved elsewhere, both conceptually and institutionally. However, in the inaugural volume of Mind in 1876, Hodgson's ideas initially found a prominent place in a central dialogue over the position of philosophy with respect to science. There, and throughout his career, Hodgson engaged in the defense of an intellectual tradition he regarded as under threat from psychological science. Both his particular formulation of an ongoing role for philosophy and his own uneasy position in the intellectual environment of late Victorian Britain shed significant light on an under-examined issue [End Page 289] of the period: the fraught relationship between philosophy and science as competing enterprises engaged in the study of the human mind."Philosophy" and "science" are easily construed as partnered intellectual complexes in modern Western society. However, closer scrutiny of the historical record shows that the two terms—whether as theoretical referents or actors' categories—have often reflected divergent priorities and that transitions from "philosophical" to "scientific" terms have been contentious. In examining the birth of natural science out of natural philosophy during the Enlightenment, the historian Andrew Cunningham has emphasized how the reordering of intellectual fields created new conflictive relationships between philosophy, science, and religion.1 He reminds us that the process of scientific secularization was but one of a set of constitutive shifts among these human activities, and that the earlier natural philosophy thus played by fundamentally different rules than its successor. A similar story can be told about the late nineteenth-century transition I am considering: in a nutshell, to borrow a phrase from Cunningham, men did not start doing mental science until they stopped doing moral philosophy. However, this time, philosophy already stood in competition with existing scientific institutions, sparking a more severe contest for authority. As mental science began to develop along the lines of the natural disciplines, Hodgson and others feared little would remain as a distinctive domain for philosophy as such, moral or otherwise. His efforts on the part of philosophy thus represent one front in an intellectual "turf war"—what recent scholars have called "boundary work," shoring up the institutional positions of different intellectual enterprises competing for authority in the world.2 Gieryn's formative analysis of boundary work was based on the contemporaneous example of John Tyndall's campaign to promote scientific over religious authority in Victorian Britain, but this was much more than a two-way struggle. The early career of Mind bears witness to a closely related, but less discussed, battle for influence between philosophy and science, in which the journal itself served as a critical "boundary object," a medium for enforcement of the distinctions between these two intellectual fields.3 [End Page 290]Thomas Dixon has recently surveyed the origins of this shift. Like Cunningham, Dixon emphasizes the constitutive differences in scope and orientation of the two intellectual enterprises, salient among them the secularization of the new human sciences.4 This process—begun tentatively by Thomas Brown and brought to fruition by Bain, Spencer, and Darwin—involved wholesale shifts in the scholarly linguistic complex, from a set of several mental categories rooted in Christian philosophical categories—affections, passions, sentiments, etc.—to a novel, explicitly "scientific," and singular grouping of emotions. While the older tradition dominant until mid-century had understood the broad range of mental phenomena as largely rational and voluntary, the new emotions were formulated as more circumscribed in purview, subconscious or autonomic in action... (shrink)

While visiting relatives in northern England in October 1865 the London chemist William Crookes witnessed firsthand the economic devastation of farming communities blighted by the cattle plague that had been sweeping Britain since June. Crookes delayed his return to London for several months and obtained official permission to begin experimenting on eradicating the disease with a new disinfectant, carbolic acid. In his report to the British government in 1866, Crookes was explicit that his experiments had been based on a germ (...) or contagion theory of the disease. Germs were considered to be airborne particles that might either be “living” material that “germinated” in the soil of animal flesh and blood or chemical poisons that decomposed flesh and blood.In the opening chapter of this fine study of the construction of British germ theories between the 1860s and 1900, Michael Worboys makes it clear that the cattle plague was a keystone in the long process of germ theory construction. Rinderpest was readily accepted by veterinary surgeons as a contagious disease to be controlled by wholesale culling with the poleax. On the other hand, they ignored or actively opposed the practical implications of a germ theory—disinfection , vaccination, and laboratory research—because these procedures posed a threat to the power and control of the veterinary profession. Plus ça change? In Britain, we are currently witnessing a similar example of party interest as a powerful Farmers' Union culls millions of cattle and sheep but prevents the use of vaccination in fighting a foot and mouth epidemic.Although a number of studies have celebrated the germ theory as the key development in producing scientific medicine in the late nineteenth century, this is the first critical book‐length study of its diffusion. The separate professional communities of veterinary practitioners, surgeons, and sanitarians are disarmingly shown to have developed different germ theories and differed over the practical consequences of their commitments. The closed subcultures inhabited by these groups meant that it took several decades before the germs of sanitarians were linked with those of surgeons and with the bacteria of microbiologists. Anyone who made a connection, such as the physicist John Tyndall, was dismissed as an inexpert interloper. Clearly, the singular specific disease germ theory was evolutionary in construction, not revolutionary.Worboys's ambitious monograph offers many fresh insights, including a finely tuned account of Joseph Lister's vacillating ideas and practices concerning wound management, and a splendid analysis of the problematic identification of specific germs causing cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid fever, and scarlet fever. His meticulous survey of the contemporary literature unravels the deep uncertainty over whether “germs” were living organisms or chemicals, spontaneously generated or ancestral, causes or concomitants of disease. The fact that unpleasant wounds and the sick sometimes recovered spontaneously made sense only if patients constitutionally differed as an appropriate or inappropriate “soil” for “germ seeds” to blossom or perish. In this way ontological germ theories complemented the traditional medical concepts of constitutional strength and weakness and the healing power of nature. This insight underlines one of the strengths of the book, namely, its recognition of continuities in the construction of disease concepts and practices.Worboys successfully challenges the view that the British medical communities acted largely as onlookers while French and German practitioners honed a laboratory‐based medicine for the twentieth century. Overall, Worboys's monograph is a challenging and extremely readable medical history of germs. It will be essential reading for students taking history of medicine programs. (shrink)

Where is the line between successful popular science writing informed by scientists' own recollections and truly reliable history? This is a book of the first kind that dallies with history but clearly remains a problematic source. As popular science writing about work since 1953 The Spark of Life is very successful and conveys a great deal of information about origin of life research and exobiology in highly readable form. Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada are, respectively, an evolutionary biologist and an (...) organic chemist/biochemist oriented toward origin of life studies. Their strength lies in clear, simple writing about sometimes complex research. Their chief weakness as historians is that they have strong opinions about the field of research they are describing. They are friends and admirers of Stanley Miller , and they fundamentally share his research orientation. They thus also share his enemies. Approached with this in view, the book can be a very useful source about the Miller “school” and its point of view in origin of life debates since 1953. But it certainly should not be mistaken for a neutral source just because it appears to be an introductory text.Let us choose a single example to see how this plays out: the case of Sidney Fox, the protein chemist and longstanding Miller antagonist. While the development of Miller's ideas is laid out in much fascinating detail and sympathetically given many pages of text, Fox's equally long career is summed up in less than five pages as a “false start” in understanding evolution of the first organic molecules into more complex proto–living systems. Fox's career did indeed take some odd turns, and his publicity seeking became something quite out of the norm after he was marginalized in the research community. But the initial differences in approach between Fox and Miller are here passed over quickly, leaving the impression that Fox never really had any answers to Miller's criticisms of his work on proteinoid microspheres . And Fox's ability to carry on research at all is attributed to his character as “an excellent self‐promoter,” with the veiled implication that he was thus able to dupe early NASA Life Sciences administrators into giving him funding. Whether one thinks that Fox's research program actually brought out any useful, important insights or not , this is surely an oversimplification of a complex story of the institutional environment that exobiology operated in during its early years. NASA administrators saw genuinely promising things in Fox's work, and even if most of those have not panned out, there is surely a story here worth telling about changing ideas within the research community and within the NASA patronage system. The competition from the mid 1950s until at least the late 1970s between Fox's “school” and the opponents, including Miller and Norman Horowitz, is a story full of historical interest, both in research journals and behind the scenes.Regarding historical material before 1953, the first forty pages of the book, this work is whiggish to the point of being completely unreliable. Again, a single example will have to suffice. John Tyndall is credited with coining the term “panspermia.” Then William Thomson is touted as a proponent in 1871 of the altered meaning, that life could be present throughout space—for example, carried on meteors yet still remaining viable. We are left with a sense that both Tyndall and Thomson, being “scientific giants” of the time , both basically agreed on this subject and that only the popular press ridiculed Thomson for this idea. But Tyndall and the Darwinians all ridiculed Thomson's idea at the time. And Thomson himself proposed the idea as part of a unified campaign against Darwinian evolution and against modern ideas on the origin of life supported by Tyndall and Huxley, a covert way of holding out against the banishing of a divine Creator by abiogenesis. But we learn none of this: the ideas are bereft of their historical context, and even their scientific context, in the same old way that the simplistic “historical sections” of science textbooks have long distorted the stories they tell. Wills and Bada's treatment of Pasteur, Pouchet, and Bastian similarly repeat many misstatements from past internalist histories. This is the case despite the fact that the authors show in their footnotes that they are aware of much of the recent work of professional historians on these subjects.This book, then, is a source to be handled with some caution but useful on the period from 1953 to the present. On the period before 1953 it should not be considered useful history. (shrink)

Romantic sensibility and political necessity led Humphry Davy, Britain's most prominent scientist in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, to pantheism: nature worship, involving for him a fervent belief in the immortality of the soul. Rapt with a vision of sublimity, from mountain tops or balloons, men of science in succeeding generations also found in pantheism a reason for their vocation and a way of making sense of their world. It should be seen as an alternative both to active (...) participation in church life (like Faraday's) and to a gritty agnosticism (like Huxley's), indicating again how subtle and complex relationships were between science and religion in the nineteenth century. (shrink)

In October 1862, the Duke of Argyll published an article in the Edinburgh Review entitled “The Supernatural.” In it, Argyll argued that contrary to the prevailing assumption, miracles were “natural” rather than “supernatural” acts of God. This reconceptualization was a response to the controversial publication Essays and Reviews (1860), which challenged orthodox Biblical doctrine. Argyll's characterization of a miracle was not novel; a number of early modern Newtonian thinkers had advanced the same argument for similar reasons. New in this nineteenth-century (...) reconceptualization, however, were (1) the recent geological, physical, and evolutionary developments and (2) the introduction of German higher criticism. Argyll and the neo-Newtonians thus attempted to construct a philosophico-theological alternative, which would constitute a middle-position between the traditional acceptance and liberal rejection of miracles. I argue finally that 21st-century debates on divine action in fact exist as part of a longer historical tradition that dates back to Augustine. (shrink)

Since the 16th century Protestant Reformation, the issue of divine inspiration and authority of the Bible has stood at the centre of Reformed faith. The question asked then, which is still with us, is whether the Bible is sufficient and complete as a revelation from God? Conflicts that arose during the Reformation still brew today, albeit with different players and contexts. Furthermore, how does the faithfulness to Scripture by reformers, such as William Tyndale and Martin Luther, and pre-Reformer, John (...) Wycliffe, influence the church's involvement and influence in God's mission today? (shrink)

In the sixteenth century, Sir Thomas More criticized Martin Luther’s purported denial of a conscious intermediate state between bodily death and bodily resurrection. In the same century, William Tyndale penned a response in defense of Luther’s view. His argument essentially defended the proposition: If the Intermediate State obtains, then bodily resurrection is superfluous for those in the paradisiacal state. In this article, I enter the fray and argue for the truth of this conditional claim. And, like William Tyndale, I use (...) the content and argument of a particular chapter in the Bible, namely, 1 Corinthians 15, to make the point. (shrink)

By challenging any assumed passivity in British adoption of continental reform, reception calls for a closer scrutiny of their relationships. The reception of Martin Luther in England reflects his changing role among continental Protestants. This chapter identifies how English reception of Luther shifted over time. Whereas the early English writer William Tyndale adapted Luther’s theological writing to speak to his own preoccupations, John Foxe was largely responsible for Elizabethan translations of Luther’s commentaries that provided pastoral guidance for afflicted consciences. (...) Luther’s translations continued to speak to troubled consciences in the seventeenth century, yet English divines more often cited Luther as a symbol than as a source in the heated debates over justification in the mid-seventeenth century. The symbolic status of Luther in theological disputes, however, did not simply introduce the indiscriminate use of his example. (shrink)

I argue that advocates of moderate epistemic idealization need some standards against which they can determine whether a particular individual P has a responsibility to acquire some specific piece of information α. Such a specification is necessary for the purpose of determining whether a reason R, the recognition of which depends on accounting for α, can legitimately be ascribed to P. To this end, I propose an initial sketch of a criterion that may be helpful in illuminating the conditions in (...) which P might be said to have a responsibility to take α into account when searching for reasons to act or believe. I worry that reason ascriptions that are based on information acquisition expectations which are not captured by this criterion may be open to charges of authoritarianism, especially when such a reason ascription prompts one person to demand that another act in a way that is responsive to the ascribed reason. (shrink)

In Liberalism without Perfection, Jonathan Quong develops what is perhaps the most comprehensive defense of the consensus model of public reason – a model which incorporates both a public-reasons-only requirement and an accessibility requirement framed in terms of shared evaluative standards. While the consensus model arguably predominates amongst public reason liberals, it is criticized by convergence theorists who reject both the public-reasons-only requirement and the accessibility requirement. In this paper, I argue that while we have good reason to reject Quong’s (...) call for a public-reasons-only requirement, all public reason liberals should endorse at least some shared evaluative standards and, hence, an accessibility requirement. (shrink)

In morally grounding a public justification requirement, public reason liberals frequently invoke the idea that persons should be construed as “free and equal.” But this tells us little with regard to what it is about us that makes us free or how a claim about our status as persons can ultimately ground a requirement of public justification. In light of this worry, I argue that a public justification requirement can be grounded in a Nozick-inspired argument from the separateness of persons (...) (one that is consistent with the idea that individuals are free and equal). As I claim, one particular feature of the fact of our separateness – the possession of a basic psychology consisting of beliefs, intentions, sentiments, and a variety of desire-like psychological states – does the most work in grounding both a principle of liberty (PL) and a requirement of public justification (RPJ). Together, PL and RPJ provide the basic framework for a theory of public reason liberalism. (shrink)

Blanche DuBois, the tragic heroine of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire , has always been read as either “mad” from the start of the play or as a character who descends into “madness.” We argue that Streetcar adumbrates elements of trauma theory, specifically symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder such as involuntary reliving of traumatic events, dissociation, guilt, shame, denial, the shattering of the self, the compulsion to repeat the story of trauma, as well as the early stages of recovery (...) from trauma. We are the first to employ trauma theory as a critical framework through which to view Blanche and the dramaturgical devices used to concretize her post-traumatic state of mind. Williams’ heroine speaks from traumatic experience and not from psychic fabrications. Indeed, we contend that the play traces Blanche’s deliberate and self-conscious working through and mourning of the traumatic losses of the past, including her idealized, narcissistic conceptions of herself within a traumatic present. Thus she is more attuned to the most disturbing parts of reality and exhibits tragic insight born of traumatic experience. Critics who see Blanche as “mad” do not fully recognize her struggle to come to terms with trauma and loss within a culture of denial. We conclude that Streetcar stages the inextricable relation between the individual and social dialectics of trauma. (shrink)

Revised versions of papers presented at the 1994 Tyndale Fellowship jubilee conference held in Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick.

In this essay, it is demonstrated that the inception of the English Bible tradition began with the oral–aural Bible in Old English translated from Latin incipient texts and emerged through a continuous tradition of revision and retranslation in interaction with contemporary social reality. Each subsequent translation achieved a more complex state by adapting to the emergence of incipient text knowledge (rediscovery of Hebrew and Greek texts), emergence of the (meaning-making) knowledge of the incipient languages (Latin, Hebrew and Greek), language change (...) (Old, Middle and Modern English), mode of communication (hearing-dominant and text-dominant), style (literal or word-for-word) and products (oral-aural Bible, handwritten manuscript Bible and printed Bible). Historical sources indicate that there were translations of portions of the English Bible since 700 CE as handwritten manuscript Bibles in Old and Middle English and in print in Modern English – even before the retranslation associated with Tyndale (1526) and despite ecclesiastical opposition since 1408. This version and its revisions (1530–1531, 1534) are followed by subsequent revisions (Coverdale Bible, Matthew’s Bible, Great Bible, Geneva Bible and Bishop’s Bible). The next revision was the King James Version (1611), which replaced all its predecessors, and which was never replaced for the next four centuries – not even by its revisions.Contribution: Contrary to the fragmentation caused by ordering individual English Bibles either by period (e.g. 20th century) or according to their features (e.g. literal), it is demonstrated that the history of English Bible translation emerged rather as a translation complex, and its history must be understood in this way. (shrink)

This book is Dewey's most fully developed treatment of logic as the theory of Inquiry. It is a later work which reflects, in part, Dewey's readings of C.S. Peirce during the 1930's. -/- Reprinted in Series: The collected works of John Dewey / ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, 3,12.; The later works, 1925 - 1953, Vol. 12.