Richard Olson

Sex and status in Scottish Enlightenment social science: John Millar and the sociology of gender roles

John Millars Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (1771) contains one of the first extensive and systematic discussions of the status of women in different societies. In this paper I attempt to show first that a combi nation of circumstances associated with the teaching of moral philos ophy at Glasgow and with the reform of Scots law undertaken by Lord Kames made the status of women a critical problem for Millar. Second, I attempt to demonstrate that Millar drew heavily upon the resources of associationist psychology to explain how female status changed from hunting to pastoral to agricultural to commercial societies and that in doing so he diverged substantially from the perspectives developed by his mentor, Adam Smith. Finally, in view of Millars extraordinarily positive reputation throughout Europe prior to the French Revolution and in view of the potential relevance of his analysis to early feminism and to mid-19th-century anthropological discussions of early matri archy, I seek to account for why his work was virtually ignored from around 1802 to 1960.

The Human Sciences

Historians have long seen the search for a viable “science of man [ sic ]” as a central feature of eighteenth-century intellectual life. David Hume’s (1711–1776) desire to be “the Newton of the moral Sciences” and his insistence in 1740 that “’tis at least worthwhile to try if the Sciences of man will not admit of the same accuracy which several parts of natural philosophy are found susceptible of” have been taken to represent the views of a huge number of intellectuals throughout the century and across all nations of Europe and North America. Moreover, the centrality of the human sciences to the Enlightenment project is acknowledged not only by those sympathetic to the goals of that project and fundamentally optimistic about its liberating consequences but also by those who have found the goals misdirected and the consequences fundamentally destructive. The issue of how to portray the relationships between such twentieth-century professional disciplines as anthropology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, psychology, or sociology and various eighteenth-century attempts to establish human sciences is both extremely complex and a matter of intense debate. Eighteenth-century authors and readers often thought in terms of categories that differ from those in use today. Thus, for example, the phrases “the natural history of man” and “philosophical history” were frequently used to include many topics now included in anthropology, linguistics, and sociology, along with some that now belong to political science and aesthetics. At the same time, “anthropology” was used in German speaking regions to cover physiology as well as topics from the first three twentieth-century disciplines.

On the Nature of God’s Existence, Wisdom and Power: The Interplay Between Organic and Mechanistic Imagery in Anglican Natural Theology — 1640–1740

According to one of the most widely read and admired accounts of the relationship between early modern scientific and religious developments, Richard Westfall’s Science and Religion in Seventeenth Century England, the chief spur to the Seventeenth Century Anglican reinvigoration of natural theology came from the mechanical philosophers, “who tried to construct a theory picturing nature as a machine running by itself without external aids.”1 One feature of this “mechanical” nature was that it was “indifferent to the existence of thinking beings”2 and another was that it “contradicted the assertion of miracles and questioned the reality of divine providence.”3 Finally, because of the obvious antagonisms between the new mechanistic science and the old Christian beliefs, the key problem of seventeenth century Christian scientists was to reconcile the two; and “reconciliation came more and more to mean the adjustment of Christian beliefs to the conclusions of science.”4

The Lost Millennium: History's Timetables under Siege (2nd edition), by Florin Diacu

The Johns Hopkins Universiy Press, Baltimore and London, 2011. Softcover. Book Condition: New. Second Edition.. 248 pages. Softcover. New book. HISTORY. We measure historyÑits defining moments, landmark documents, and great figuresÑby dates. The French Revolution began in 1789, the Magna Carta was originally issued in 1215, and Julius Caesar died in the year 44 BC. What makes these dates correct, though? Is it possible that there is a massive gap in the historical record and that the calendar we use...

The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World (review)

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Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives.

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Interaction between science and religion: some preliminary considerations 2. Science and religion in the scientific revolution 3. The parallel between scientific and religious reform 4. Divine activity in a mechanical universe 5. Science and religion in the enlightenment 6. The fortunes and functions of natural theology 7. Visions of the past: religious belief and the historical sciences 8. Evolutionary theory and religious belief Postscript: science and religion in the twentieth century Bibliographic essay Sources of quotations Index.

Sir John Leslie and the Laws of Electrical Conduction in Solids

It is contended that Sir John Leslie provided both a theoretical discussion and a limited experimental confirmation of Ohms Law in a paper written in 1791 and published in 1824, three years prior to Ohms presentation in Die galvanische Kette mathematische bearbeitet.