This chapter contains sections titled: * Notes * References.

Raphael Meldola (1849-1915), an industrial chemist and keen naturalist, under the influence of Darwin, brought new German studies on evolution by natural selection that appeared in the 1870s to the attention of the British scientific community. Meldola's special interest was in mimicry among butterflies; through this he became a prominent neo-Darwinian. His wide-ranging achievements in science led to appointments as president of important professional scientific societies, and of a local club of like-minded amateurs, particularly field naturalists. This is (...) an account of Meldola's early scientific connections and studies related to entomology and natural selection, his contributions to the study of mimicry, and his promotion in the mid-1890s of a more theory driven approach among entomologists. (shrink)

Until the 1860s, science in Russia was principally conducted in Latin, French, and German. In the years leading up to and following the creation of the Russian Chemical Society in 1868, Russian chemists – treated in this article as both a representative sample of Russian scientists and also practitioners of the flagship science of the period – debated both the merits of developing a nomenclature that would enable Russian to “hold” modern inorganic and organic chemistry, and the practicability of (...) doing so. The article explores debates over whether Russian syntax could be adapted to represent chemical compounds according to emerging western conventions or in a sui generis manner, as well as the struggles of Russian scientists to use French and German to communicate with their foreign counterparts, arguing that the details of these debates highlight both the fruitfulness and the limits of using “standardization” as a framework for linguistic codification. (shrink)

SummaryThe problem of conquests and territorial expansion, including their interpretation, evaluation, and legitimisation, has been crucial for European national historiographies. Consequently, attempts by the Holy Roman emperors, particularly of the Saxon and Hohenstaufen dynasties, to control Italy and Burgundy were hotly debated among nineteenth-century German historians, while Poland's union with Lithuania, and the annexation of the vast territories of the east which followed, was a central topic for Polish historians of the time. Modern historians of historiography in (...) both countries have carefully analysed these narratives, emphasising their ideological and political contexts, such as their involvement in the Grossdeutsch versus Kleindeutsch controversy and the controversy between the so-called Cracow and Warsaw historical schools. In this paper I propose a comparative analysis of these two discourses which dealt with analogical issues and, as I demonstrate, developed with a parallel dynamic. Such an analysis, I argue, allows an escape from the paradigm of national exceptionalism, and the discovery of what was typical or, perhaps, constitutive of the discourse on territorial expansion of the time, instead of focusing on the uniqueness of the national context. This analysis embraces the conceptualisation, argumentation, and rhetoric of those nineteenth-century German and Polish historians discussing the expansion of the medieval Holy Empire and early-modern Poland. Moreover, it locates their interpretations within an international context of a broader Western historiographical tradition, involving issues of domination, cultural transfer, and colonialism. Finally, it examines the parallel mechanism of searching for, advocating, and perpetuating the idea of uniqueness of national history. (shrink)

This article explores the ways the emerging concept of humanism was circulated and defined in early nineteenth-century German-language press. By analyzing a digitized corpus of German-language newspapers and periodicals published between 1808 and 1850, this article looks into the ways the concept of humanism was employed in book reviews, news, political reports, and feuilleton texts. Newspapers and periodicals had a significant role in transmitting the concept of humanism from educational debates into general political language in the (...) 1840s. Furthermore, in an era of growing social problems and political unrest, humanism became increasingly associated with moral sentiments. Accordingly, this article suggests that its new political meanings and emotional underpinnings made humanism culturally contagious, particularly immediately before and during the 1848/49 revolutions. (shrink)

Since Freud's earliest psychoanalytic theorisation around the beginning of the twentieth-century, the concept of the unconscious has exerted an enormous influence upon psychoanalysis and psychology, literary, critical and social theory. Yet prior to Freud, the concept of the unconscious already possessed a complex genealogy in nineteenth-century German philosophy and literature, beginning with the aftermath of Kant's Critical Philosophy and the origins of German Idealism, and extending into the discourses of Romanticism and beyond. Despite the many (...) key thinkers who contributed to the Germanic discourses on the unconscious, the English speaking world remains comparatively unaware of this heritage and its influence upon the origins of psychoanalysis. Bringing together a collection of experts in the fields of German Studies, Continental Philosophy, the History and Philosophy of Science, and the History of Psychoanalysis, this volume examines the various theorisations, representations and transformations undergone by the concept of the unconscious in nineteenth-century German thought"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The early history of German patriotism is complex and illuminates many of patriotism’s potential virtues as well as its dangers. Throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, patriotism’s overarching connotation was devotion to the greater good, but whether that greater was local, national, or global varied dramatically. Early uses of patriotism were devoid of national or military connotations and instead denoted local engagement in public projects and willingness to aid to those in need. The patriot moreover worked (...) for enlightened political reform, convinced that good government could convert subjects into citizens. Patriotism also had distinct cosmopolitan connotations, indicating someone who had humanity’s good generally as a goal. In the early aftermath of the French Revolution, acting in the interest of humanity’s development meant supporting the revolutionaries as the best hope for furthering political progress. As the Revolution dissolved into the Terror, German intellectuals hoped that Germany could assume the mantle of progress: being a patriot meant supporting German culture as a means of furthering humanity’s enlightenment. The Napoleonic Wars, however, shifted Germans’ attitude significantly: years of French occupation culminated in patriotism being defined as favoring German culture and unity in the interest of defeating the French. Patriotism’s nationalist connotations from that point intensify significantly. But its early history argues for remembering and revitalizing its potential to unite the local with the global and to promote enlightened civic engagement in the pursuit of political progress. (shrink)

It is a wonderful, often beautiful book."--Brian Hyer, University of Wisconsin-Madison "This is an important book that many in music will profit from confronting. It is a performative work, embodying and recreating what it wishes to argue.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 229-231 [Access article in PDF] James A. Good, editor. The Early American Reception of German Idealism. 5 vols. Bristol: Thoemmes, 2002. Pp. 2826. Cloth, $635.00. The five volumes of this set reprint an impressive collection of long unavailable texts by five largely forgotten nineteenth-century American authors, each of whom was familiar with at least some aspects of the (...) philosophical revolution that began in Germany with the appearance of Kant's Critiques and whose own writings were deeply influenced by German Idealism. Largely due to the efforts of these five authors, idealism began to rival empiricism and common-sense realism as a major philosophical movement in the United States by the end of the nineteenth century and was an important part of that intellectual context from which later movements, notably pragmatism, grew. But despite the obvious importance of these authors and texts for understanding both the American "reception" of German Idealism and the history of American philosophy, they are today virtually unknown and most of the volumes reprinted in this set are exceedingly rare. Every student of the history of American thought must therefore be grateful to Thoemmes Press and to James A. Good for making these important works once again available. Each volume is prefaced by an excellent introduction summarizing the essential biographical and historical facts, the relevant intellectual context, and the immediate and lasting influence of the work or author in question. Good's introductions also include insightful, albeit brief, comments on the philosophical contents and distinctive character of each volume. Indeed, one of the pleasures of perusing these volumes is the opportunity this affords to appreciate the originality and philosophical talent of some of these long neglected authors, particularly Marsh, Hickok, and Everett.Volume One reprints what would appear to be the first book on Hegelian "psychology" to be published in America: Psychology; or a View of the Human Soul, by Frederick Augustus Rauch (1841). Rauch (1806-41) was a German emigrant classicist who became enamored with Hegelian philosophy during his student years and was particularly influenced by the Heidelberg theologian Charles Daub. In America, Rauch became head of the Classics Department at Marshall College, where he also taught theology and philosophy. Described as "the first enthusiastic Hegelian in the United States," Rauch's Hegelianism was of the "Old" or "Right" variety. Despite its title, "psychology" is the topic of only the second half of this volume, the first part of which is devoted to "anthropology." These divisions correspond almost exactly to the similarly titled sections of Hegel's "philosophy of subjective spirit," which is the obvious model for Rauch's Psychology. The latter, however, displays none of the dialectical power of Hegel's work and is larded with empirical observations and sundry opinions on a variety of topics. It is perhaps illuminating to discover that American "Hegelianism" can trace its roots to such an eccentric and unrigorous work, which was widely read and even adopted as a textbook by several colleges in the mid-nineteenth century and thus can be described as the book that begin the process of "introducing Hegelianism to America."Volume Two contains The Remains of the Rev. James Marsh, D.D.: Late President and Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy in the University of Vermont; with a Memoir of His Life, edited by Joseph Torrey (1843). Marsh (1794-42), who was reputedly "the first American to study Kant," was a polymath who trained at Dartmouth College and at Andover and Union Seminaries as a classicist, theologian, and philosopher and then served for many years as the President of the University of Vermont. In addition to translating Herder and others, Marsh published the first American edition of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, with an [End Page 229] introductory essay of his own. This work, the first edition of which appeared in 1829, proved to be extremely popular and was instrumental in introducing Kantian and post-Kantian speculation to the New World. Though one of the founders of the Transcendentalist movement in America, Marsh's... (shrink)

Nietzsche is generally regarded as a severe critic of historical method and scholarship; this view has influenced much of contemporary discussions about the role and nature of historical scholarship. In this article I argue that this view is seriously mistaken . I do so by examining what he actually says about understanding history and historical method, as well as his relation to the founders of modern German historiography . I show, contrary to most expectations, that Nietzsche knew these historians (...) well and that he fundamentally affirmed their view of historical method. What he primarily objected to among his contemporaries was that historical scholarship was often regarded as a goal in itself, rather than as a means, and consequently that history was placed above philosophy. In fact, a historical approach was essential for Nietzsche’s whole understanding of philosophy, and his own philosophical project. (shrink)

Taking its lead from analyses of gift exchange by Marcel Mauss and Marshall Sahlins as well as of contact by Charles Long and Jonathan Z Smith, this article elaborates a theory of the exchange, among dominant social subjects, of representations of their subjected proximate others in order to rectify the crisis precipitated by contact with otherness that threatens their claims to autonomy, authority, homogeneity, and universality. Specifically it situates the polemical exchange of representations of women among Friedrich Schlegel, G W (...) F Hegel, and Karl Gutzkow as exemplary German male bourgeois efforts to rectify the crises to subject formation generated, in part, by the emergence of gender-coded bifurcated bourgeois society and signaled by the Kantian and French Revolutions. The public dissemination of apotropaic representations screened the dependence upon proximate others by, and determined the positions among, exchange participants as well as maintained structures of domination. (shrink)

This paper discusses a dialectic whereby the law not only influenced medical thinking in late nineteenth-century Germany, but also underwent medicalization of its own initiative. At the end of the 1880s, social legislation was crucial in initiating the German discourse on traumatic nervous disorders. By employing doctors as medical experts in court, the law also created a new experiential realm for doctors, altering their behavior toward patients and shifting their focus from therapy to investigation. However, in the (...) wake of their experiences in court, doctors developed a dual etiology of traumatic symptoms, which included the law itself as a pathogenic element with the power to aggravate symptoms. Two medical views of law can be distinguished: some doctors claimed that it was the desire to receive the pensions offered under social legislation that induced workers to perpetuate and exaggerate their symptoms; others argued that since pension claims embroiled claimants in intimidating legal proceedings, the pathogenic effect of social legislation stemmed from fear rather than greed. (shrink)

The Long Nineteenth Century--from Romanticism, to socialism, and phenomenology--was a prosperous time for women philosophers. This Handbook, the first of its kind, is dedicated to their works. It explores women's pathbreaking contributions to philosophy: the ways in which they shaped and transformed philosophical movements, the new concepts they established and schools they helped form, and the philosophical problems they uncovered and sought to resolve. Through thirty-one chapters, the Handbook furnishes novel interpretations of the contributions of women philosophers in (...) the German tradition, while also deepening and revising our understanding of nineteenth-century philosophy. By investigating the nineteenth century through the works of women philosophers, the Handbook detects understudied or unknown connections between figures, movements, and positions in European thought. It offers a richer and more complex picture of one of the most exciting periods in the history of philosophy, and raises crucial systematic questions concerning the philosophical canon and canon-making. Through its newly-commissioned contributions, the Handbook honors the work of trailblazing women philosophers. (shrink)

The long Nineteenth Century spans a host of important philosophical movements: romanticism, idealism, socialism, Nietzscheanism, and phenomenology, to mention a few. Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Marx are well-known names from this period. This, however, was also a transformative period for women philosophers in German-speaking countries and contexts. Their works are less well-known, yet offer stimulating and path-breaking contributions to nineteenth-century thought. In this period, women philosophers explored a wide range of philosophical topics and styles. (...) Throughout the movements of romanticism, idealism, socialism, and phenomenology, women philosophers helped shape philosophy's agenda and provided unique approaches to existential, political, aesthetic, and epistemological questions. While during the Nineteenth Century women continued to be (largely) excluded from formal education and positions, they developed ways of philosophizing that was accessible, intuitive, and activist in spirit. The present volume makes available to English-language readers--often for the first time--the works of nine significant women philosophers, with the hope of stimulating further interest in and scholarship on their works. The Editors' introductions offer a comprehensive introduction to the contributions of women philosophers in the period, but also to individual figures and movements. The translations are furnished with explanatory footnotes and are designed to be accessible to students as well as scholars. (shrink)

This article unearths little-studied accounts of the status and role of hypotheses in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany. German thinkers regarded hypotheses, including those about unobservable causes for visible effects, as legitimate and necessary ingredients of scientific inquiry. They debated the nature of probable hypotheses resulting from inductions, proposed heuristics for making causal hypotheses, and advanced criteria for assessing and testing them. My survey of these rich and multifaceted discussions shows that many themes and topics that (...) we commonly associate with modern philosophy of science were discussed decades earlier by authors of educational and practice-oriented books on logic: consequential testing, underdetermination, auxiliary hypotheses, the problem of unobservable entities, fallibility, and elaborate methodologies of observation and experimentation. It also illuminates the long-term history of present-day criteria for hypothesis evaluation. (shrink)

ArgumentDuring the early nineteenth century, the German Association of Investigators of Nature and Physicians drew upon the cultural resource of choral-society songs as a way to promote male camaraderie and intellectual collaboration. Investigators of nature and physicians wished to forge a unified, scientific identity in the absence of a national one, and music played a critical role in its establishment. During the 1820s and 30s, Liedertafel and folk songs formed a crucial component of their annual meetings. The (...) lyrics of these tunes, whose melodies were famous folk songs, were rewritten to reflect the lives of investigators of nature and physicians. Indeed, the singing of these Liedertafel songs played an important part in the cultivation of the Naturforschers’ persona well into the twentieth century. (shrink)

The nineteenth century is a period of stunning philosophical originality, characterised by radical engagement with the emerging human sciences. Often overshadowed by twentieth century philosophy which sought to reject some of its central tenets, the philosophers of the nineteenth century have re-emerged as profoundly important figures. The Routledge Companion to Nineteenth Century Philosophy is an outstanding survey and assessment of the century as a whole. Divided into seven parts and including thirty chapters (...) written by leading international scholars, the _Companion_ examines and assesses the central topics, themes, and philosophers of the nineteenth century, presenting the first comprehensive picture of the period in a single volume: German Idealism philosophy as political action, including young Hegelians, Marx and Tocqueville philosophy and subjectivity, including Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche scientific naturalism, including Darwinism, philosophy of race, experimental psychology and Neo-Kantianism utilitarianism and British Idealism American Idealism and Pragmatism new directions in Mind and Logic, including Brentano, Frege and Husserl. The Routledge Companion to Nineteenth Century Philosophy is essential reading for students of philosophy, and for anyone interested in this period in related disciplines such as politics, history, literature and religion. (shrink)

This paper traces the historical roots of the “mad scientist,” a concept that has powerfully shaped the public image of science up to today, by investigating the representations of chemists in nineteenth-century Western literature. I argue that the creation of this literary figure was the strongest of four critical literary responses to the emergence of modern science in general and of chemistry in particular. The role of chemistry in this story is crucial because early nineteenth-century chemistry (...) both exemplified modern experimental laboratory research and induced, due to its rapid growth, a ramification and fragmentation of knowledge that undermined former ideals of the unity of knowledge under the umbrella of metaphysics and religion. Because most writers considered contemporary chemistry an offspring of “wrong alchemy,” all four responses drew on the medieval literary figure of the “mad alchemist” to portray chemists. Whereas early writers considered the quest for scientific knowledge to be altogether in vain, later writers pointed out the narrow-minded goals and views specifically of chemistry. A third response moved that criticism to a metaphysical and religious level, by relating chemistry to materialism, nihilism, atheism and hubris. The fourth response, the “mad scientist,” elaborated on the hubris theme by attaching moral perversion to the “mad alchemist.”. (shrink)

With the introduction of the technique of auscultation in nineteenth-century medicine, the auditory became a most important means of producing diagnostic knowledge. The correct classification and interpretation of the sounds revealed by auscultation, however, remained an issue of negotiation and often controversy throughout the mid-nineteenth century. This article examines the codification of lung sounds within two cultural and geographic contexts: first, the original approach as it was developed by Laennec and his followers in Paris that came (...) to be dominant in French medicine, and second, the alternative approach that grew out of Joseph Skoda’s reception of Laennec’s method in Vienna and became widely adopted in the German-speaking world. On one hand, it will be argued that lung sound classifications attempted a standardization of the perception and the interpretation of auscultation sounds. On the other hand, it will be shown that the development of auscultation sounds was shaped by the local context in which it took place. This article seeks to shed light on the way in which auditory experiences were instrumentalized for epistemic purposes in medicine. Furthermore, it discusses the role of standardization both as a mechanism for the universalization of knowledge and as a contextually bounded practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition ed. by Kristin Gjesdal and Dalia NassarAlison StoneKristin Gjesdal and Dalia Nassar, editors. Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 336. Hardback, $99.00."How plausible, [Dalia Nassar and I] kept asking, is it that women published philosophy in the early modern period and then (...) simply ceased to think and publish philosophy in the nineteenth century?" remarked Kristin Gjesdal recently (interview with Richard Marshall, 3:16am [blog], https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/gadamer-herder-and-the-womenphilosophers-of-the-long-nineteen-century?c=end-times-series). Not plausible at all—yet this is what historians of women in philosophy often seem to have assumed, judging by the remarkably small amount of scholarship on nineteenth-century women philosophers compared with those of the early modern period or the twentieth century. Eileen O'Neill, for instance, claims that it was "not a particularly friendly century for women philosophers" (1). In fact, as Gjesdal and Nassar observe, women were "significant contributors" to the "thriving intellectual cultures in German-speaking countries" at this time (1). Gjesdal and Nassar contrast Germanic countries to France and Britain in this regard, yet I would add that nineteenth-century Britain too had a vibrant print and periodical culture that created openings for women philosophers such as Harriet Martineau, Anna Jameson, Frances Power Cobbe, and many others. The broader point remains: the nineteenth century has only seemed empty of women philosophers because we have not yet investigated the women thinkers of this period or challenged the canons and narratives from which they have been excluded.Recognizing German women philosophers is particularly important because the vast majority of scholarship on the nineteenth century focuses on the German tradition. Consequently, unless we recover the work of German-speaking women, we will never change the narrative about this period. This makes the present anthology invaluable for both teaching and research. Edited by Gjesdal and Nassar, it contains new translations, nearly all by Anna Ezekiel, of texts by historical German-speaking women philosophers.Regarding teaching, many courses on post-Kantian European philosophy include no women until Beauvoir or Arendt. Such courses typically cover Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger. The editors have clearly designed this volume to enable instructors easily to bring women into such courses, by providing extracts—of suitable lengths for teaching—from women affiliated respectively with German idealism and Romanticism (Germaine de Staël, Karoline von Günderrode, and Bettina von Arnim), Marxism (Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg), Nietzscheanism (Hedwig Dohm, Lou Salomé), and phenomenology (Edith Stein, Gerda Walther). Some of these women are already well-known as political activists, as with Luxemburg and Zetkin, or under the elastic heading of "writers," as with Staël and von Arnim. But this collection presents these women's writings in a new light, showcasing their philosophical side. After all, we have learned to read Marx and Nietzsche philosophically: why not extend the same courtesy to Staël or Luxemburg?For researchers, this collection will likewise be invaluable. Post-Kantian European philosophy has been slow to respond to the wider questioning and broadening of the traditional philosophical canon. It remains sadly common for narratives of nineteenth-century German philosophy to discuss men only—a position that this book makes untenable. [End Page 336] Hopefully it will galvanize philosophers to integrate these women into the historiography of the post-Kantian tradition at last.In the introduction, the editors helpfully contextualize the selected writings, arguing that these women's exclusion from academic institutions led them to philosophize in ways that spoke to general audiences, connected with lived experience, and addressed practical and political concerns. In short, these women did a type of philosophy that was not purified but socially engaged, and can be a model for us today. Thereafter the book consists of sections on nine women philosophers, ordered chronologically. Each section begins with an editorial introduction to the philosopher and her interests, ideas, writings, and interlocutors.The writings included from Staël—whose work spans the period from the French Revolution into Romanticism—are "On Women Writers" from... (shrink)

This is a study of the relationship between postmodernism and post-enlightenment German thought reading the contemporary theoretical scene through its nineteenth-century counterpart and examining the intersections.

This article contributes to the historiography of scientific objectivity as well as to the broader attempt to historicize basic epistemic categories by examining the case of empirical psychology in eighteenth-century Germany. From the time when the philosopher Christian Wolff first presented empirical psychology in the late 1720s until Kantian philosophers elaborated on the topic towards the end of the century, the discourse hinged on discussions of how to obtain scientific knowledge of the soul. Whereas the work of Wolff (...) and his followers reflected established epistemic techniques for accomplishing this, from the early 1770s philosophers highlighted a new category of difficulties connected to the development of a systematic method of psychological self-observations. These difficulties, I argue, both complement and complicate the picture of how the subject became an obstacle to knowledge first in the mid-nineteenth century. (shrink)

El trabajo analiza la participación de la mujer en el proceso migratorio desde mediados del siglo XIX hasta los inicios del siglo XX mediante la colectividad alemana establecida en Valparaíso. Nos detenemos específicamente en la actividad social, el quehacer laboral y la vida familiar de la comunidad germana, con lo que podremos acceder a un ámbito poco conocido del accionar femenino en la empresa migratoria europea, en donde se desarrollan valores y costumbres que constituyen parte importante de la identidad alemana. (...) Se utilizan principalmente como fuentes diarios de vida y testamentos realizados por mujeres. The paper analyzes the participation of women in the migration process, since the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, through the established German community in Valparaiso. We stop specifically in social activity, professional work and family life of the German community, which we can access a little known field of women in the European migration, where they develop values and customs that are an important part of German identity. We mainly use as sources diaries and wills made??by women. (shrink)

Some recent philosophers of science have argued that chemistry in the nineteenth century “largely lacked theoretical foundations, and showed little progress in supplying such foundations” until around 1900, or even later. In particular, nineteenth-century atomic theory, it is said, “played no useful part” in the crowning achievement of nineteenth-century chemistry, the powerful subdiscipline of organic chemistry. This paper offers a contrary view. The idea that chemistry only gained useful theoretical foundations when it began to (...) merge with physics, it will be argued, is based on an implicit conception of scientific theory that is too narrow, and too exclusively oriented to the science of physics. A broader understanding of scientific theory, and one that is more appropriate to the science of chemistry, reveals the essential part that theory played in the development of chemistry in the nineteenth century. It also offers implications for our understanding of the nature of chemical theory today. (shrink)

This paper was inspired by the author’s fortunate acquisition of a copy of an original copy of “Muspratt’s Chemistry” that was published in 1860. This raised, for the author, interesting and significant issues regarding the chemistry content and its presentation in the context of chemistry and education today. The paper is presented in two parts: Part 1 explores the content, structure and gives reactions to and insights into the original publication, whereas Part 2 provides a focus on the developments in (...) chemistry education as experienced by the author during almost 70 years of learning and teaching chemistry in schools and in teacher education in England. James Sheridan Muspratt is best remembered for this publication which is fully entitled “Chemistry, theoretical, practical and analytical as applied and relating to Arts and Manufactures”. This was developed during the period 1852–1860 and ran into several editions as well as being translated into German and Russian. Earlier he had done chemistry research with Liebig and Hofmann, and in 1848 he founded the Liverpool College of Chemistry. It is clear that he corresponded extensively with many of the leading nineteenth century chemists in the UK and Europe, many of whose names are still familiar with us today. (shrink)

This volume constitutes the first collective critical study of German philosophy in the nineteenth century. A team of leading experts explore the influential figures associated with the period--including Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Frege--and provide fresh accounts of the philosophical movements and key debates with which they engaged.

In modern German ‘Anschauung’ is translated as intuition. But in Kant’s technical philosophical context, it means an intuition derived from previous visualizations of physical processes in the world of perceptions. The nineteenth century chemists’ predilection for Kantian Anschauung led them to develop an intuitive representation of what exists beyond the bounds of the senses. Molecular structure is one of the illuminating outcomes. (Ochiai 2021, pp. 1–51) This mental habit seems to be dominant among chemists even in the (...) twentieth century, as is illustrated by the electronic theory of organic chemistry and the frontier orbital theory as well. The former assumes that (1) bonds are paired electrons shared by bonded atoms—in fact, electrons in molecules are not localized in bonds; (2) the difference of electronegativities between bonded atoms causes electron drifts—expressed by the curly arrow—that result in bond formation or bond cleavage. The latter focuses on the orbitals that make the greatest contribution to the energy of a system undergoing electron delocalization, while the LCAO method says, as is suggested by the word Linear Combination of Atomic Orbitals, molecular orbitals should be constructed from all of the atomic orbitals that have the appropriate symmetry. In other words, every molecular orbital contributes to some extent to the electronic state of a molecule. The curly arrow in the electronic theory and the orbital lobe in the frontier orbital theory illustrate an intuitive character of these theories. Although both theories rely on such simple and qualitative models rather than mathematically rigid quantum mechanical calculations, they are successful in explaining, predicting, and designing chemical reactions. What makes these prima facie intuitive theories so successful? In this study we address this problem from a historical and philosophical as well as scientific point of view. The key to solve this problem is that they are concerned with only bond formation or bond cleavage, in which the localized-bond principle holds. (shrink)

A comprehensive study of German materialism in the second half of the nineteenth century is long overdue. Among contemporary historians the mere passing references to Karl Vogt, Jacob Moleschott, and Ludwig Buchner as materialists and popularizers of science are hardly sufficient, for few individuals influenced public opinion in nineteenth-century Germany more than these men. Buchner, for example, revealed his awareness of the historical significance of his Kraft und Stoff in comments made in 1872, just seventeen (...) years after its original appearance. A philosophical book which has undergone twelve big German editions in the short span of seventeen years, which further has been issued in non-German countries and languages about fifteen to sixteen times in the same period, and whose appearance (although its author was entirely unknown up to then) has called forth an almost unprecedented storm in the press,... such a book can be nothing ordinary; the world-calling it enjoys at present must be justified through its wholly special characteristics or by the merits of its form and content. ' Vogt, Moleschott and Buchner explicitly held that their materialism was founded on natural science. But other materialists of the nineteenth century also laid claim to the scientific character of their own thought. It is likely that Marx and Engels would have permitted their brand of materialism to have been called scientific, provided, of course, that 'scientific' was understood in their dialectical meaning of the term. Socialism, Engels maintained, had become a science with Marx. (shrink)

A number of writers have noted affinities between the form and style of Wittgenstein′s Philosophical Investigations and the Christian confessional tradition. 1 , 2 In this paper, however, If the Christian tradition, than of the Christian inheritance refracted through, and secularized by, German Romanticism. I shall argue that Wittgenstein′s work is less a direct continuation on this context, not only do many of the features of the Investigations which seem eccentric or wilful become naturalized, but light is also (...) thrown on Wittgenstein′s claim that the twentieth and late nineteenth century play no part in his spiritual makeup, and that his ‘cultural ideal’ derives from ‘Schumann′s time.’ 3. (shrink)

Many revolutionary proposals entered the biological disciplines during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, theories that provided the foundations for today’s science and gave structure to its various branches. Cell theory, evolutionary theory, and genetics achieved their modern form during this earlier time. The period also saw a variety of new, auxiliary hypotheses that supplied necessary supports for the more comprehensive theories. These included ideas in morphology, embryology, systematics, language, and behavior. These scientific developments forced a reconceptualization of nature (...) and the place of human beings therein. The legacy for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has been a materialization and mechanization of the most fundamental processes of life. From our current perspective, it’s easy to look back and assume that the foundational ideas of our contemporary science must have had the same character as they now seem to manifest. I think a closer inspection of biological science of this earlier period will reveal a discipline whose philosophic assumptions are quite different from those of its present incarnation. This becomes especially vivid when 1 we focus on the contributions of German Idealism and Romanticism to the biology of the earlier dispensation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 161-181 [Access article in PDF] Translating Liberty in Nineteenth-Century Japan Douglas Howland A concept of liberty was but one element of the Japanese engagement with western political theory after the Perry intrusion of 1853, when United States warships led by Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to negotiate a commercial treaty with the U.S. This scandal, which ultimately led to (...) the Meiji Restoration of 1867, immediately reorganized scholarly priorities among those intellectuals interested in western knowledge and technology. Western learning under the "feudal" Tokugawa regime (1603-1867) was organized as "Dutch studies" because the Dutch were the sole European trading partner of Japan from 1641 to 1854. Dutch studies paid particular attention to European mathematics, astronomy, geography, natural history, and the Dutch language. The Perry intrusion, however, prompted the rise of "western learning": language study quickly expanded to include English, French, and German; and the content of learning emphasized European law and political philosophy. But the concepts that defined this content of western thought did not translate well; they did not fit naturally with existing Japanese concepts. Hence the translation of western political theory necessitated the invention of new terminology with which to engage the new political language. Accordingly, Japanese efforts to translate western political theory must be understood as both problems of language, the creation and circulation of new concepts, as well as problems of action, and the usage of new concepts in debates about the programs and policies to be implemented in a "westernizing" Japan. 1 [End Page 161]The scholars who figure in this essay--Kato Hiroyuki, Tsuda Mamichi, Nishi Amane, Kanda Takahira, Fukuzawa Yukichi, and Nakamura Keiu--were all key figures in the intellectual passage from Tokugawa to Meiji, from Dutch studies to western learning. They began their careers in the Tokugawa institute for Dutch studies; most traveled to Holland, England, or the United States during the 1860s; and after the Meiji Restoration they became intellectual and educational leaders under the new administration. 2 In addition to founding private academies or filling prominent government posts, they created the first literary society, the Meiji Six Society (named after the year of its founding, the sixth year of the Emperor Meiji's reign, 1873), which sponsored public debates, published these proceedings in the Meiji Six Journal, and so hoped to promote enlightenment among the Japanese people. In addition to introducing public debate to Japan, this transitional intelligentsia was involved in the fundamental work of creating the language in which to raise issues of constitutional form or personal freedoms. In their translations of western texts and original texts about western law and political philosophy they created the neologisms to translate western concepts and participated in the standardization of terminology that made western knowledge coherent.The two concepts discussed in this essay, which were among the first to figure prominently in intellectual debates of the early 1870s, were "liberty" and "religion," the pairing of which in the debate over freedom of religion from 1872 to 1874 was crucial in defining a Japanese conception of liberty. Although religious liberty arose in western Europe as a result of the conflict between church and state authorities, the issue in Japan was a direct challenge to the new central government's attempt to decree a national Shinto doctrine in 1868. As the sole case of unanimous support for personal liberty among the transitional intelligentsia, the debate over freedom of religion determined key distinctions between private and public behavior that defined the Japanese conception of "liberty" for the duration of Japan's imperial constitution (to 1945). As a right of individuals, liberty resided in the exclusively private domain of thought, conscience, and religious faith. As a public matter the people's liberty necessarily gave way to government maintenance of public order.In part this essay responds to the work of Japanese philologists who study the translation and standardization of modern Japanese vocabulary. Much of this work is based on dictionaries; a word is said to have become standard as it appears in greater numbers of Japanese-Chinese, Japanese... (shrink)