Download or read book Measure of the Earth written by Larrie D. Ferreiro and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the early 18th-century expedition of scientists sent by France and Spain to colonial Peru to measure the degree of equatorial latitude, which could resolve the debate between whether the earth was spherical or flattened at the poles.

Download or read book The Enlightenment in Practice written by Jeremy L. Caradonna and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public academic prize contests—the concours académique—played a significant role in the intellectual life of Enlightenment France, with aspirants formulating positions on such matters as slavery, poverty, the education of women, tax reform, and urban renewal and submitting the resulting essays for scrutiny by panels of judges. In The Enlightenment in Practice, Jeremy L. Caradonna draws on archives both in Paris and the provinces to show that thousands of individuals—ranging from elite men and women of letters artisans, and peasants—participated in these intellectual competitions, a far broader range of people than has been previously assumed. Caradonna contends that the Enlightenment in France can no longer be seen as a cultural movement restricted to a small coterie of philosophers or a limited number of printed texts. Moreover, Caradonna demonstrates that the French monarchy took academic competitions quite seriously, sponsoring numerous contests on such practical matters as deforestation, the quality of drinking water, and the nighttime illumination of cities. In some cases, the contests served as an early mechanism for technology transfer: the state used submissions to identify technical experts to whom it could turn for advice. Finally, the author shows how this unique intellectual exercise declined during the upheavals of the French Revolution, when voicing moderate public criticism became a rather dangerous act.

Download or read book The Quest for the True Figure of the Earth written by Michael Rand Hoare and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1730s two expeditions set out from Paris on extraordinary journeys; the first was destined for the equatorial region of Peru, the second headed north towards the Arctic Circle. Although the eighteenth century witnessed numerous such adventures, these expeditions were different. Rather than seeking new lands to conquer or mineral wealth to exploit, their primary objectives were scientific: to determine the Earth's precise shape by measuring the variation of a degree of latitude at points separated as nearly as possible by a whole quadrant of the globe between Equator and North Pole. Although such information had consequences for navigation and cartography, the motivation was not simply utilitarian. Rather it was one theme among many in an intellectual revolution in which advances in mathematics paralleled philosophical strife, and reputations of the living and the dead stood to be elevated or destroyed. In particular the two expeditions hoped to prove the correctness of Isaac Newton's prediction that the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but flattened at the poles. In this study, the 'Figure of the Earth' controversy is for the first time comprehensively explored in all its several dimensions. It shows how a largely neglected episode of European science, that produced no spectacular process or artefact - beyond a relatively minor improvement in maps - nevertheless represents an almost unique combination of theoretical prediction and empirical method. It also details the suffering of the two teams of scientists in very different extremes of climate, whose sacrifices for the sake of knowledge rather than colonial gain, caught the imagination of the literary world of the time.

Download or read book Emilie du Ch telet between Leibniz and Newton written by Ruth Hagengruber and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-10-29 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emilie du Châtelet was one of the most influential woman philosophers of the Enlightenment. Her writings on natural philosophy, physics, and mechanics had a decisive impact on important scientific debates of the 18th century. Particularly, she took an innovative and outstanding position in the controversy between Newton and Leibniz, one of the fundamental scientific discourses of that time. The contributions in this volume focus on this "Leibnitian turn". They analyze the nature and motivation of Emilie du Châtelet's synthesis of Newtonian and Leibnitian philosophy. Apart from the Institutions Physiques they deal with Emilie du Châtelet's annotated translation of Isaac Newton's Principia. The chapters presented here collectively demonstrate that her work was an essential contribution to the mediation between empiricist and rationalist positions in the history of science.

Download or read book The Vices of Learning written by Sari Kivisto and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-05-09 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Vices of Learning: Morality and Knowledge at Early Modern Universities, Sari Kivistö examines scholarly vices in the late Baroque and early Enlightenment periods. Moral criticism of the learned was a favourite theme of Latin dissertations, treatises and satires written in Germany ca. 1670–1730. Works on scholarly pride, logomachy, curiosity and other vices kept the presses running at German Protestant universities as well as farther north. Kivistö shows how scholars constructed fame and how the process involved various means of producing celebrity. The book industry, plagiarism and impressive titles were all labelled dishonest means of advancing a career. In The Vices of Learning Kivistö argues that scholarly ethics was an essential part of the early modern intellectual framework.

Download or read book The Physiocrats and the World of the Enlightenment written by Liana Vardi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-19 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a framework for understanding physiocratic theory and the development of modern economics.

Download or read book In Praise of Books written by Nelly Hanna and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In fine detail, the author explores economic influences on culture during periods of plenty and poverty. She examines the bond between commerce and escalating literacy via the building of schools, the availability of cheap paper, and the proliferation of books. And she assesses coffeehouses, storytellers, and phantom plays as a principal circuit for the spread of oral middle-class culture. Drawing on both published and unpublished sources, Hanna unveils a full-fledged Cairene middle-class culture that bridges the gap between the salons (majalis) of the elite and the common people. A major contribution to Egypt’s cultural record, this book sets a high standard for future research on the history of the Middle East.

Download or read book The Man Who Flattened the Earth written by Mary Terrall and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2006-05-05 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self-styled adventurer, literary wit, philosopher, and statesman of science, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. Offering an elegant and accessible portrait of this remarkable man, Mary Terrall uses the story of Maupertuis's life, self-fashioning, and scientific works to explore what it meant to do science and to be a man of science in eighteenth-century Europe. Beginning his scientific career as a mathematician in Paris, Maupertuis entered the public eye with a much-discussed expedition to Lapland, which confirmed Newton's calculation that the earth was flattened at the poles. He also made significant, and often intentionally controversial, contributions to physics, life science, navigation, astronomy, and metaphysics. Called to Berlin by Frederick the Great, Maupertuis moved to Prussia to preside over the Academy of Sciences there. Equally at home in salons, cafés, scientific academies, and royal courts, Maupertuis used his social connections and his printed works to enhance a carefully constructed reputation as both a man of letters and a man of science. His social and institutional affiliations, in turn, affected how Maupertuis formulated his ideas, how he presented them to his contemporaries, and the reactions they provoked. Terrall not only illuminates the life and work of a colorful and important Enlightenment figure, but also uses his story to delve into many wider issues, including the development of scientific institutions, the impact of print culture on science, and the interactions of science and government. Smart and highly readable, Maupertuis will appeal to anyone interested in eighteenth-century science and culture. “Terrall’s work is scholarship in the best sense. Her explanations of arcane 18th-century French physics, mathematics, astronomy, and biology are among the most lucid available in any language.”—Virginia Dawson, American Historical Review Winner of the 2003 Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society

Download or read book Space and Self in Early Modern European Cultures written by David Warren Sabean and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of 'selfhood' conjures up images of self-sufficiency, integrity, introspectiveness, and autonomy – characteristics typically associated with 'modernity.' The seventeenth century marks the crucial transition to a new form of 'bourgeois' selfhood, although the concept goes back to the pre-modern and early modern period. A richly interdisciplinary collection, Space and Self integrates perspectives from history, history of literature, and history of art to link the issue of selfhood to the new and vital literature on space. As Space and Self shows, there have at all times been multiple paths and alternative possibilities for forming identities, marking personhood, and experiencing life as a concrete, singular individual. Positioning self and space as specific and evolving constructs, a diverse group of contributors explore how persons become embodied in particular places or inscribed in concrete space. Space and Self thus sets the terms for current discussion of these topics and provides new approaches to studying their cultural specificity.

Download or read book Women Intellectuals in Post 68 France written by I. Long and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-10-30 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accounts of public intellectuals in France and French feminism have focused on a specific set of women thinkers overlooking some major women intellectuals. This book aims redresses this balance by studying these forgotten intellectuals creating a cultural and theoretical re-evaluation of the gendered phenomenon of the public intellectual in France.

Download or read book The Psychology of Inequality written by Michael Locke McLendon and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-11-19 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Psychology of Inequality, Michael Locke McLendon looks to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's thought for insight into the personal and social pathologies that plague commercial and democratic societies. He emphasizes the way Rousseau appropriated and modified the notion of self-love, or amour-propre, found in Augustine and various early modern thinkers. McLendon traces the concept in Rousseau's work and reveals it to be a form of selfish vanity that mimics aspects of Homeric honor culture and, in the modern world, shapes the outlook of the wealthy and powerful as well as the underlying assumptions of meritocratic ideals. According to McLendon, Rousseau's elucidation of amour-propre describes a desire for glory and preeminence that can be dangerously antisocial, as those who believe themselves superior derive pleasure from dominating and even harming those they consider beneath them. Drawing on Rousseau's insights, McLendon asserts that certain forms of inequality, especially those associated with classical aristocracy and modern-day meritocracy, can corrupt the mindsets and personalities of people in socially disruptive ways. The Psychology of Inequality shows how amour-propre can be transformed into the demand for praise, whether or not one displays praiseworthy qualities, and demonstrates the ways in which this pathology continues to play a leading role in the psychology and politics of modern liberal democracies.

Download or read book Voltaire Almighty written by Roger Pearson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-11-07 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Voltaire's personal life was as colorful as his intellectual life. Of independent means and mind, he never married, but he had long-term affairs with two women: The first was Emilie Chatelet, his intellectual equal. A renowned scientist married to a French bureaucrat, she died while giving birth to yet another man's child. The second, Mary Louise Denis, his niece, twenty years his junior, remained with her esteemed uncle for the last two decades of his life." "The consummate outsider, a dissenter who craved acceptance while flamboyantly disdaining it, author of countless stories, poems, books, plays, treatises, and tracts as well as some twenty thousand letters to his friends: Voltaire had a long and active life, all for the cause of freedom - his own and others'."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book What Does it Mean to be an Empiricist written by Siegfried Bodenmann and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-06-11 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book begins with an observation: At the time when empiricism arose and slowly established itself, the word itself had not yet been coined. Hence the central question of this volume: What does it mean to conduct empirical science in early modern Europe? How can we catch the elusive figure of the empiricist? Our answer focuses on the practices established by representative scholars. This approach allows us to demonstrate two things. First, that empiricism is not a monolith but exists in a plurality of forms. Today’s understanding of the empirical sciences was gradually shaped by the exchanges among scholars combining different traditions, world views and experimental settings. Second, the long proclaimed antagonism between empiricism and rationalism is not the whole story. Our case studies show that a very fruitful exchange between both systems of thought occurred. It is a story of integration, appropriation and transformation more than one of mere opposition. We asked twelve authors to explore these fascinating new facets of empiricisms. The plurality of their voices mirrors the multiple faces of the concept itself. Every contribution can be understood as a piece of a much larger puzzle. Together, they help us better understand the emergence of empiricism and the inventiveness of the scientific enterprise.

Download or read book Language and Enlightenment written by Avi Lifschitz and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlights the importance of language in the social theory, epistemology, and aesthetics of the Enlightenment. Argues that awareness of the historicity and linguistic rootedness of all forms of life was a mainstream Enlightenment notion rather than a feature of the so-called 'Counter-Enlightenment'.

Download or read book A Philosophy of the Insect written by Jean-Marc Drouin and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world of insects is at once beneath our feet and unfathomably alien. Small and innumerable, insects surround and disrupt us even as we scarcely pay them any mind. Insects confront us with the limits of what is imaginable, while at the same time being essential to the everyday functioning of all terrestrial ecosystems. In this book, the philosopher and historian of science Jean-Marc Drouin contends that insects pose a fundamental challenge to philosophy. Exploring the questions of what insects are and what scientific, aesthetic, ethical, and historical relationships they have with humanity, he argues that they force us to reconsider our ideas of the animal and the social. He traces the role that insects have played in language, mythology, literature, entomology, sociobiology, and taxonomy over the centuries. Drouin emphasizes the links between humanistic and scientific approaches—how we have projected human roles onto insects and seen ourselves in insect form. Caught between the animal and plant kingdoms, insects force us to confront and reevaluate our notions of gender, family, society, struggle, the division of labor, social organization, and individual and collective intelligence. A remarkably original and thought-provoking work, A Philosophy of the Insect is an important book for animal studies, environmental ethics, and the history and philosophy of science.

Download or read book The Economic Turn written by Steven Kaplan and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2019-01-16 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mid-eighteenth century witnessed what might be dubbed an economic turn that resolutely changed the trajectory of world history. The discipline of economics itself emerged amidst this turn, and it is frequently traced back to the work of François Quesnay and his school of Physiocracy. Though lionized by the subsequent historiography of economics, the theoretical postulates and policy consequences of Physiocracy were disastrous at the time, resulting in a veritable subsistence trauma in France. This galvanized relentless and diverse critiques of the doctrine not only in France but also throughout the European world that have, hitherto, been largely neglected by scholars. Though Physiocracy was an integral part of the economic turn, it was rapidly overcome, both theoretically and practically, with durable and important consequences for the history of political economy. The Economic Turn brings together some of the leading historians of that moment to fundamentally recast our understanding of the origins and diverse natures of political economy in the Enlightenment.

Download or read book Dissonance in the Republic of Letters written by Mark Darlow and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Eighteenth-century French cultural life was often characterised by quarrels, and the arrival of Viennese composer Christoph Willibald Gluck in Paris in 1774 was no exception, sparking a five-year pamphlet and press controversy which featured a rival Neapolitan composer, Niccolo Piccinni. However, as this study shows, the Gluck-Piccinni controversy was about far more than which composer was better suited to lead French operatic reform. A consideration of cultural politics in 1770s Paris shows that a range of issues were at stake: court versus urban taste as the proper judge of music, whether amateurs or specialists should have the right to speak of opera, whether the epic or the tragic mode is more suited for drama reform, and even: why should the public argue about opera at all? Mark Darlow is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Cambridge."