Studies in Intellectual History


Book Description

Originally published in 1953. In this collection of essays, prominent midcentury intellectual historians provide critical essays on their field of specialty. Studies in Intellectual History gathers work by Harold Cherniss, George Boas, Ludwig Edelstein, Leo Spitzer, and others.




Forbidden Knowledge


Book Description

“Wonderful . . . offers and provokes meditation on the timeless nature of censorship, its practices, its intentions and . . . its (unintended) outcomes.” —Times Higher Education Forbidden Knowledge explores the censorship of medical books from their proliferation in print through the prohibitions placed on them during the Counter-Reformation. How and why did books banned in Italy in the sixteenth century end up back on library shelves in the seventeenth? Historian Hannah Marcus uncovers how early modern physicians evaluated the utility of banned books and facilitated their continued circulation in conversation with Catholic authorities. Through extensive archival research, Marcus highlights how talk of scientific utility, once thought to have begun during the Scientific Revolution, in fact began earlier, emerging from ecclesiastical censorship and the desire to continue to use banned medical books. What’s more, this censorship in medicine, which preceded the Copernican debate in astronomy by sixty years, has had a lasting impact on how we talk about new and controversial developments in scientific knowledge. Beautiful illustrations accompany this masterful, timely book about the interplay between efforts at intellectual control and the utility of knowledge. “Marcus deftly explains the various contradictions that shaped the interactions between Catholic authorities and the medical and scientific communities of early modern Italy, showing how these dynamics defined the role of outside expertise in creating 'Catholic Knowledge' for centuries to come.” —Annals of Science “An important study that all scholars and advanced students of early modern Europe will want to read, especially those interested in early modern medicine, religion, and the history of the book. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice




A History of Ideas in Science Education


Book Description

By allowing key scientists, researchers, professors, and classroom teachers of science to speak for themselves through their published writings about what is best and needed for the field, Dr. DeBoer presents a fascinating account of the history of science education in the United States from the middle of the 19th century to the present. The book relates how science first struggled to find a place in the school curriculum and recounts the many debates over the years about what that curriculum should be. In fact, many of what we consider modern ideas in science education are not new at all but can be traced to writings on education of one hundred years ago. The book is aimed at all those interested in science education: classroom teachers and science education leaders concerned about the historical justification of the goals and strategies proposed for the field. The book should be enjoyed not only by the researcher but also by anyone curious about just how curriculum is decided upon and implemented on a national scale. “This is without question the finest book of its kind on the market. It deserves to be widely read by current and future science teachers, supervisors, science education faculty in colleges and universities, curriculum developers, and program officers in funding agencies.” —The Science Teacher “Adds a significant dimension to the history of American schooling and curriculum.” —History of Education Quarterly




Ideas, Concepts, and Reality


Book Description

An original exploration of the distinction between subjective ideas and objective concepts.




New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas


Book Description

From a Nobel Laureate economist, a collection of essays outlining ideas on political theory, economic freedom and epistemology. Following on F. A. Hayek’s previous work Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (1967), New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas collects some of Hayek’s most notable essays and lectures dealing with problems of philosophy, politics and economics, with many of the essays falling into more than one of these categories. Expanding upon the previous volume the present work also includes a fourth part collecting a series of Hayek’s writings under the heading “History of Ideas.” Of the articles contained in this volume the lectures on “The Errors of Constructivism”and “Competition as a Discovery Procedure” have been published before only in German, while the article on “Liberalism” was written in English to be published in an Italian translation in the Enciclopedia del Novicento by the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana at Rome.




Reason and Imagination


Book Description

First published in 1962, Reason and Imagination presents collection of fourteen essays dedicated to Marjorie Hope Nicholson and is divided equally between works of her colleagues and of her former students. It contains themes like noble numbers and poetry of devotion, Cromwell as Davidic King, the isolation of the renaissances hero, Milton’s dialogue on Astronomy, music, mirth and galenic traditions in England, the Augustan conception of history, Locke and Sterne, and literary criticism and artistic interpretation, to weave a narrative of the history of ideas in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of literary history, philosophy, comparative literature, and English literature in general.




Literature, Theory and the History of Ideas


Book Description

The papers in this book, covering a wide range of themes such as history, globalisation, colonialism, trauma, ecology, cinema, science, post-humanism, feminisms, and alternative sexualities, explore the structures of power that bring about and contour the prevailing, stereotypical and hegemonic notions of identity, gender and culture. The focal point of these interactions is the perpetual dissemination of ideas which stimulate the knowledge system with its roots spread across diverse scholarly disciplines. This collection will be of great interest to academicians, scholars, researchers, and students, as it explores various discourses in literature, cultural studies, literary theory and film studies.




The Logic of the History of Ideas


Book Description

Human cultures generate meanings, and the history of ideas, broadly conceived, is the study of these meanings. An adequate theory of culture must therefore rest on a suitable philosophical enquiry into the nature of the history of ideas. Mark Bevir's book explores the forms of reasoning appropriate to the history of ideas, enhancing our understanding by grappling with central questions such as: What is a meaning? What constitutes objective knowledge of the past? What are beliefs and traditions? How can we explain why people held the beliefs they did? The book ranges widely over issues and theorists associated with post-analytic philosophy, post-modernism, hermeneutics, literary theory, political thought, and social theory.




History of the Idea of Progress


Book Description

The idea of progress from the Enlightenment to postmodernism is still very much with us. In intellectual discourse, journals, popular magazines, and radio and talk shows, the debate between those who are "progressivists" and those who are "declinists" is as spirited as it was in the late seventeenth century. In History of the Idea of Progress, Robert Nisbet traces the idea of progress from its origins in Greek, Roman, and medieval civilizations to modern times. It is a masterful frame of reference for understanding the present world. Nisbet asserts there are two fundamental building blocks necessary to Western doctrines of human advancement: the idea of growth, and the idea of necessity. He sees Christianity as a key element in both secular and spiritual evolution, for it conveys all the ingredients of the modern idea of progress: the advancement of the human race in time, a single time frame for all the peoples and epochs of the past and present, the conception of time as linear, and the envisagement of the future as having a Utopian end. In his new introduction, Nisbet shows why the idea of progress remains of critical importance to studies of social evolution and natural history. He provides a contemporary basis for many disciplines, including sociology, economics, philosophy, religion, politics, and science. History of the Idea of Progress continues to be a major resource for scholars in all these areas.




Imagination


Book Description

The origins, nature, function and effects of imagination have engrossed writers, theologians, philosophers and practitioners of the arts across the ages; its influence on painting and music continues to be debated. It has been simultaneously feared as a dangerous, uncontrollable force and revered as the supreme visionary power. Cocking's Imagination is an exploration of the history of imagination from antiquity to the Renaissance. The book opens with a treatment of imagination in the writings of Aristotle and Plato. Developments in the Middle Ages are traced, with particular attention to the parallel tradition in Islamic thought of the period and the book pursues the concept through the theories of Dante and the Neo-platonists to the High Renaissance. The manuscript was left unfinished on Professor Cocking's death in 1986 and has been edited by Penelope Murray, who adds an introductory essay. The book will be of particular value as a background to the explosion of interest in the imagination in the Romantic period.