scholarly journals Alfred Russel Wallace’s Intelligent Evolution and Natural Theology

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 316
Author(s):  
Michael A. Flannery
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Common Descent ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Object ◽  
Do So

Alfred Russel Wallace’s conception of evolution and its relation to natural theology is examined. That conception is described as intelligent evolution—directed, detectably designed, and purposeful common descent. This essay extends discussion of the forces and influences behind Wallace’s journey from the acknowledged co-discoverer of natural selection, to include his much lesser known position within the larger history of natural theology. It will do so by contextualizing it with an analysis of Darwin’s metaphysical commitments identified as undogmatic atheism. In this sense, David Kohn’s thesis that Darwin was the “last of the natural theologians” is revised to suggest that Wallace deserves to be included within the larger context of the British natural theologians in a surprisingly Paleyan tradition. As such, an important object of this essay is to clear away the historical fog that has surrounded this aspect of Wallace. That “fog” is composed of various formal historical fallacies that will be outlined in the penultimate section. Once described, explained, and corrected, Wallace becomes an enduring figure in carrying the British tradition of natural theology into the twentieth century and beyond.

scholarly journals Similarities, Differences, and Missed Connections between Thomas S. Kuhn, Gaston Bachelard and the Continental Historiography of Science

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-111
Author(s):  
Alberto Fragio
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
European History ◽  
Gaston Bachelard ◽  
Historical Turn ◽  
Michael Friedman ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Object

AbstractAccording to the American philosopher, Michael Friedman, while triggering the so-called “historical turn,” Kuhn reinstated the history of science as perhaps the most important object for the philosophy of science. In this paper, I show that this reinstatement is rather a rehabilitation of the philosophical and epistemological uses of the history of science, something already present in the continental historiography of science in the first half of the twentieth century, and especially in Gaston Bachelard’s work. In this sense, I undertake a review of the European history and philosophy of science during that period, paying special attention to Gaston Bachelard as one of the leading representatives of the French historical epistemology of the 1930s. I conclude with the late and quite problematic reception of Bachelard’s thought in the early work of Thomas S. Kuhn. My thesis is this strand may help to outline what is continental history and philosophy of science.

scholarly journals Evolutionary theories and the philosophy of science

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-246
Author(s):  
Georgy S. Levit ◽  
◽  
Uwe Hossfeld ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
History Of Biology ◽  
Darwinian Revolution ◽  
Common Descent ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Research Programmes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mathematical Sciences

Philosophical theories proceeding from the history of physical-mathematical sciences are hardly applicable to the analysis of biosciences and evolutionary theory, in particular. This article briefly reconstructs the history of evolutionary theory beginning with its roots in the 19th century and up to the ultracontemporary concepts. Our objective is to outline the dynamics of Darwinism and anti-Darwinism from the perspective of the philosophy of science. We begin with the arguments of E. Mayr against the applicability of T. Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions to the history of biology. Mayr emphasized that Darwin’s publication of the Origin of Species in 1859 caused a genuine scientific revolution in biology, but it was not a Kuhnian revolution. Darwin coined several theories comprising a complex theoretical system. Mayr defined five most crucial of these theories: evolution as such, common descent of all organisms including man, gradualism, the multiplication of species explaining organic diversity, and, finally, the theory of natural selection. Distinguishing these theories is of great significance because their destiny in the history of biology substantially differed. The acceptance of one theory by the majority of the scientific community does not necessarily mean the acceptance of others. Another argument by Mayr proved that Darwin caused two scientific revolutions in biology, which Mayr referred to as the First and Second Darwinian Revolutions. The Second Darwinian Revolution happened already in the 20th century and Mayr himself was its active participant. Both revolutions followed Darwin’s concept of natural selection. The period between these two revolutions can be in no way described as “normal science” in Kuhnian terms. Our reconstruction of the history of evolutionary theory support Mayr’s anti-Kuhnian arguments. Furthermore, we claim that the “evolution of evolutionary theory” can be interpreted in terms of the modified research programmes theory by Imre Lakatos, though not in their “purity”, but rather modified and combined with certain aspects of Marxian-Hegelian dialectics.

scholarly journals O prvoj monografskoj obradi škrinje Svetog Šimuna u Zadru

Ars Adriatica ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Marijana Kovačević
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Date ◽  
The Third ◽  
Monographic Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Very High ◽  
Do So

This paper paraphrases the first monographic study of the silver casket which was commissioned in the last quarter of the fourteenth century as a reliquary for the body of St Simeon in Zadar. The author of the monograph ‘The Silberschrein des S. Simeone in Zara’ is Alfréd Gotthold Meyer, an art historian from Berlin. The manuscript was written in German, translated into Hungarian and published in Budapest in 1894. Both the manuscript and the book are available only in a few copies in Croatia and this was one of the incentives for writing this article, apart from the need to introduce and evaluate one of the key works ever written on this important subject, and to do so in a more detailed manner than it had been done before. Meyer divided the material in five chapters. In the first chapter he deals with the traditions about the relic. The second chapter is a summary of the documents concerning the history of the silver casket. In the third chapter Meyer describes the reliefs on the casket and discusses their iconography, while in the fourth chapter he analyses them stylistically and attempts to reconstruct the original arrangement of particular reliefs. The final, fifth chapter is the most important part of this work, because it emphasizes comparisons between the Zadar casket and similar works in Italy and Dalmatia. The book has all the qualities of a scholarly text which is rather surprising for such an early date. Meyer pointed out a number of key notions about the supposedly different authors of particular reliefs, for example several master pieces of Italian painting and sculpture which may have inspired these authors, and he also noted the important seventeenth-century restoration on the casket. A. G. Meyer set very high scholarly standards with his work, which were rarely achieved in many subsequent publications on the casket, especially during the first half of the twentieth century.

scholarly journals Early Days of the History of Science in Uruguay

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Laura Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Initial Approximation ◽  
La Plata ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Significant Figures ◽  
Do So

In this article, I provide an initial approximation to the establishment and the early stages of the history of science in Uruguay. To do so, I focus on the first courses on the subject dictated in Uruguay and the first figures—both local and foreign—that took part in the process. With this objective, first, I examine the introduction of the discipline into the Río de la Plata—and into Argentina more particularly—via the arrival of European historians. I then analyze the role played by some of the first most significant figures in the history of science in Uruguay in the second quarter of the twentieth century. Finally, I explore and briefly describe the first courses dictated at the Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias (School of Humanities and Sciences) of the Universidad de la República (University of the Republic) during the mid-twentieth century.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Malcolm Crook
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Turnout ◽  
Important Object

Free and fair elections, on the basis of universal suffrage, are a relatively recent achievement, their development deeply controversial, and how ordinary people voted in the past, as opposed to who they elected, has become an important object of scholarly research of late. France represents an excellent case study for exploring the history of voting on account of the long, uneven, and contested process of experimentation that was undertaken there. The sovereignty of the people, enunciated in 1789, was expressed in the frequent election of numerous representatives, at local as well as national level, while an enduring tradition of direct democracy also encouraged the use of referendums. France became an influential electoral laboratory as a result and much was demanded of its citizens as they learned to vote in some challenging circumstances. Their ensuing apprenticeship seemed to have been completed in the twentieth century, with the belated advent of a female franchise and consistently high turnout in all elections, but declining participation over the last few decades has raised serious doubts. This fascinating subject is tackled here on a thematic basis, highlighting candidatures and campaigning, as well as who could vote, how they did so and to what extent, beginning in the Ancien Régime and ending in the present day.

scholarly journals Harald Cramér – A Great Statistician

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-112
Author(s):  
Daniel Thorburn
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mathematical Statistics ◽  
Modern Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Do So

Harald Cramér is one of the great persons in the history of mathematical statistics and insurance mathematics in the twentieth century. He is perhaps the most well known Swedish statistician in modern time. The editor of “Lithuanian Journal of Statistics” has kindly asked me to write some notes on Harald Cramér, may be because my supervisor was one of Cramér’s pupils. I am not the best person to do so, but I will do my best. At the end I will also give some references for those who want to read more about Cramér.

Hard Objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-517
Author(s):  
Ned Hercock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Discrete Series ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
Gerard Manley Hopkins ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
The World ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of

This essay examines the objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series (1934). It considers their primary property to be their hardness – many of them have distinctively uniform and impenetrable surfaces. This hardness and uniformity is contrasted with 19th century organicism (Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Ruskin). Taking my cue from Kirsten Blythe Painter I show how in their work with hard objects these poems participate within a wider cultural and philosophical turn towards hardness in the early twentieth century (Marcel Duchamp, Adolf Loos, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others). I describe the thinking these poems do with regard to industrialization and to human experience of a resolutely object world – I argue that the presentation of these objects bears witness to the production history of the type of objects which in this era are becoming preponderant in parts of the world. Finally, I suggest that the objects’ impenetrability offers a kind of anti-aesthetic relief: perception without conception. If ‘philosophy recognizes the Concept in everything’ it is still possible, these poems show, to experience resistance to this imperious process of conceptualization. Within thinking objects (poems) these are objects which do not think.

Review: Urban Latino Cultures: La Vida Latina en LA by Gustavo Leclerc, Raúl Villa, and Michael J. Dear (eds.)

1999 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-128
Author(s):  
Catherine S. Ramirez
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
History Of ◽  
Crime Wave ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The City ◽  
History Of Los Angeles

Throughout the twentieth century (and now the twenty-first), the specter of a Latina/o past, present, and future has haunted the myth of Los Angeles as a sunny, bucolic paradise. At the same time it has loomed behind narratives of the city as a dystopic, urban nightmare. In the 1940s Carey McWilliams pointed to the fabrication of a “Spanish fantasy heritage” that made Los Angeles the bygone home of fair señoritas, genteel caballeros and benevolent mission padres. Meanwhile, the dominant Angeleno press invented a “zoot” (read Mexican-American) crime wave. Unlike the aristocratic, European Californias/os of lore, the Mexican/American “gangsters” of the 1940s were described as racial mongrels. What's more, the newspapers explicitly identified them as the sons and daughters of immigrants-thus eliding any link they may have had to the Californias/os of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or to the history of Los Angeles in general.

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