William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) and the “Interim Period” in the history of English etymology

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Anatoly Liberman

Henry Fox Talbot, the father of photography, was a polymath, and among his many publications we find works on mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, archeology, ancient history, mythology, and Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions. He was also at home in botany. In 1847 he brought out a thick book titled English Etymologies. His archive at Cambridge allows one to trace the preparatory stages for this work. Talbot’s book is instructive as an example of how some talented, brilliantly educated, and industrious Englishmen in the forties of the nineteenth century went about discovering the origin of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English words. Talbot was aware of sound correspondences but did not feel bound by them. A list of his sources gives a good idea of the state of the art in England. Talbot’s etymologies are interesting only from this point of view. They should be studied as we study the efforts of much earlier researchers, that is, as part of the history of science.

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-96
Author(s):  
Markus Messling

Abstract In the New Science (1744), Giambattista Vico defined filologia as “the doctrine of all the institutions that depend on human choice” of the mondo civile. When nineteenth-century European nationalism was on the rise, supported by narratives of cultural homogeneity and specificity, philological comparatism was the state-of-the-art and it, often, legitimated the obsessions with the purity of origins and genealogies. Italy, characterized by internal plurality and its Mediterranean entanglements, is a model case. Whereas many discourses of the Risorgimento aspired to shape a new Italian nation after the classical model, Michele Amari’s History of the Muslims of Sicily (1854–1872) marked an astonishing exception. For him, going back to Islamic-Sicilian history, its literary, rhetorical and linguistic culture, meant to resume, on a higher level of incivilmento (Vico), what had been obscured by cultural decline: the spirit of freedom and equality, which Ibn Khaldūn had attributed to the Bedouins and their dynamics in history.


Author(s):  
S. Selwyn ◽  
A. C. Wardlaw

It is customary for textbooks on the history of science or of medicine to trace the origins of microbiology to the last quarter of the nineteenth century in France and Germany. Apart from mentioning Leeuwenhoek's observations in the 1670s, they virtually ignore the considerable amount of work which extends back to the sixteenth century. Much of this was, in fact, British, with Scots at home or abroad figuring prominently in the story (Selwyn 1974, 1976).


Geophysics ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-234
Author(s):  
Samuel J. Allen

Each group in every age is faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges which appear to be different from and more formidable than those faced previously by others. History, however, records innumerable achievements in all fields of endeavor which have resulted from meeting such challenges successfully. The history of science describes periods of rapid advancements followed by more stable periods when the advances become accepted as the state‐of‐the‐art. Depending upon the suddenness of the advancements, they are frequently referred to as explosions or revolutions. Many occur in the normal course of development, while others result from meeting unusual challenges.


Author(s):  
Michael D. Gordin

Dmitrii Mendeleev (1834–1907) is a name we recognize, but perhaps only as the creator of the periodic table of elements. Generally, little else has been known about him. This book is an authoritative biography of Mendeleev that draws a multifaceted portrait of his life for the first time. As the book reveals, Mendeleev was not only a luminary in the history of science, he was also an astonishingly wide-ranging political and cultural figure. From his attack on Spiritualism to his failed voyage to the Arctic and his near-mythical hot-air balloon trip, this is the story of an extraordinary maverick. The ideals that shaped his work outside science also led Mendeleev to order the elements and, eventually, to engineer one of the most fascinating scientific developments of the nineteenth century. This book is a classic work that tells the story of one of the world's most important minds.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 180-190
Author(s):  
Rajkumar Bind

This paper examines the development of modern vaccination programme of Cooch Behar state, a district of West Bengal of India during the nineteenth century. The study has critically analysed the modern vaccination system, which was the only preventive method against various diseases like small pox, cholera but due to neglect, superstation and religious obstacles the people of Cooch Behar state were not interested about modern vaccination. It also examines the sex wise and castes wise vaccinators of the state during the study period. The study will help us to growing conciseness about modern vaccination among the peoples of Cooch Behar district.   


Author(s):  
Daniel R. Melamed

Every performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’'s Mass in B Minor makes choices. The work’s compositional history and the nature of the sources that transmit it require performers to make decisions about its musical text and about the performing forces used in its realization. The Mass’s editorial history reflects deeply ideological views about Bach’s composition and how it should sound, not just objective reporting on the piece, with consequences for performances that follow specific editions. Things left unspecified by the composer need to be filled in, and every decision—including the choice to add nothing to Bach’s text—represents an interpretation. And the long performance history of the Mass offers a range of possibilities, reflecting a tension between the performance of a work like the Mass in Bach’s time and the tradition inherited from the nineteenth century. Every performance thus represents a point of view about the piece; —there are no neutral performances.


1990 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl F. Kaestle

The History of Education Quarterly has done it again. Despite many scholars' previous attempts to summarize the state of the art in historical studies of literacy, this special issue will now be the best, up-to-date place for a novice to start. It should be required reading for everyone interested in this subfield. The editors have enlisted an impressive roster of prominent scholars in the field, and these authors have provided us with an excellent array of synthetic reviews, methodological and theoretical discussions, and exemplary research papers.


Author(s):  
Seyed Mostafa Assi

The history of lexicography in Iran dates back to more than 2,000 years ago, to the time of the compilation of bilingual and monolingual lexicons for the Middle Persian language. After a review of the long and rich tradition of Persian lexicography, the chapter gives an account of the state of the art in the modern era by describing recent advances and developments in this field. During the last three or four decades, in line with the advancements in western countries, Iranian lexicography evolved from its traditional state into a modern professional and academic activity trying to improve the form and content of dictionaries by implementing the following factors: the latest achievements in theoretical and applied linguistics related to lexicography; and the computer techniques and information technology and corpus-based approach to lexicography.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document