Mathematics is a gentleman\u27s art: Analysis and synthesis in American college geometry teaching, 1790-1840

The story of geometry education in the American college has been subject to neglect, with most historians assuming that all available information was published in secondary sources around the turn of the twentieth century. However, recent trends in the history of science include the revelation of the development of the scientific community before the Civil War and an interest in the study of textbooks. Additionally, the literature lacks attempts to place geometry education and mathematics professors within the scientific community. There are also no modern biographies of the three principal actors, Jeremiah Day, John Farrar, and Charles Davies. Finally, mathematicians in the early nineteenth century often framed their discussions according to various understandings of two key terms, analysis and synthesis. ;This study, therefore, seeks to address these gaps. Day, Farrar, and Davies were the first three American authors to write series of mathematical textbooks, and their volumes on geometry were the most popular in nineteenth-century American colleges. As these facts are explored, the existence of a significant community of mathematics professors is demonstrated. These professors made incremental adjustments to the traditional liberal arts curriculum while carrying out normal science and publicizing European mathematics in colleges which were themselves friendly to Mathematics; Day, Farrar, and Davies weighed British and French influences, had much in common with their contemporaries in Scotland, and formed an essential step between elite colonial amateur mathematicians and university research Mathematics;;The dissertation is presented in six chapters. The first reviews the literature on the history of American mathematics and science between 1790 and 1840. This chapter also establishes French mathematics and the history of analysis and synthesis as givens in the background of the story of American college geometry education. The second chapter evaluates the Scottish experience with geometry textbooks, paying special attention to the manifestation of analysis and synthesis as mathematical styles, method of proof, and educational techniques in John Playfair\u27s Elements of Geometry. Then, the third, fourth, and fifth chapters lay out the biographies and careers of Day, Farrar, and Davies, and these chapters discuss the professors\u27 geometry textbooks with respect to analysis and synthesis. Finally, the conclusion ties together the themes raised above and outlines the history of American geometry education after 1840

Metaphors in the construction of theory: Ramus, Peirce and the American mind

This study argues for the mutual impenetration of logical, legal and scientific metaphors and attempts to determine the role played by them in the construction of theory. Specifically it attempts to discover the impact which the metaphors of topical logic may have had on the construction of American ideology. Chapter 1 offers a brief discussion of logical metaphors and their relation to the social and intellectual settings which generate them. Chapter 2 extends that discussion to principles of positive law and political order as they developed in the unstable atmosphere of 16th Century Europe. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 attempt to relate the metaphors defined in Chapters 1 and 2 to the development of the scientific models which emerged during the scientific revolution of the 17th Century. These chapters proceed in the context of a discussion of the interaction of Aristotelian, Cartesian and Ramean paradigms. Chapter 6 argues for the crucial importance of topical metaphors in the establishment of order in the American colonies. Chapters 7 and 8 carry the argument for a New England Mind into a national setting and discuss how Ramean metaphors contributed to the construction of American conceptions of political order and physical law. These chapters attempt to identify a controlling metaphor of continuity which operated at the base of American models. Chapter 9 claims this metaphor of continuity as the logical ground of pragmatic thought, transmitted to C. S. Peirce through the German logical tradition via Leibniz and Wolff. Chapter 10 extends that discussion to a specific investigation of Peirce\u27s Illustrations of the Logic of Science, considered here as representative of a fundamental commitment on Peirce\u27s part to a methodology which would underwrite the rest of his thought. Chapter 11 laments the failure of James, Dewey and Royce to appreciate the power of Peirce\u27s model and discusses the effect which their fragmentation of his continuous reality had on American philosophy. Peirce\u27s logic of science emerges as a fundamental expression of an American mind with roots sunk deep in a Ramean logical paradigm

The Philosophical Psychology of Charles S. Peirce

This work is about the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) and nineteenth century psychology. More precisely, it is about the interactions between Peirce’s scientific practice as an experimental psychologist and the development of his philosophical reflection, especially his epistemology. The main thesis of this work is that Peirce’s theory of perception is inferential, and that this has far-reaching consequences on his account of the self, on his reflection on the method of science and on what counts as a scientific fact. This latter point also connects his theory of inquiry with his distinctive metaphysics of continuity. I defend my thesis as follows. In the first chapter, I explore the early development of an inferential account of perception in Peirce and its connections with his logic of science and his theory of inquiry more broadly. To do so, I examine Peirce’s 1865 Harvard Lectures in light of the inferential philosophy of science of William Whewell and the theory of perception as unconscious inferences presented by Wilhelm Wundt in 1862-3. In the second chapter, I bring Peirce’s inferentialism to bear on some of his better-known works: the 1868 “cognition” papers and the Illustrations of the Logic of Science of 1877-8. The third chapter further expands the context of Peirce’s inferential theory of perception by looking at German psychology and finding a new perspective from which to assess Kant’s influence on Peirce’s thought. Chapter 4 looks at Peirce’s use of experimental psychology in photometry and measurement techniques developed for astronomy in psychology. Chapter 5 engages with Peirce’s “boundary work” on science by comparing his engagement with psychical research with James’ and looking at Peirce’s metaphysics in relation to evolutionary psychology. Finally, Chapter 6 assesses Peirce’s “mature” theory of perception in light of psychical research and his metaphysics of continuity

Graduate studies (Texas Tech University)

Report on Charles Sanders Peirce and his contributions to a newspaper, includes yearly breakdowns of his contributions, analysis of his writings, his contributions to philosophy, and more

Educating Semiosis: Exploring ecological meaning through pedagogy

This thesis consists of six essays – framed by introduction and conclusion chapters – that develop possibilities for philosophy of education and pedagogy from the lens of bio-semiotics and edu-semiotics (biological and educational semiotics). These transdisciplinary inquiries have found commonality in the concept of learning-as-semiosis, or meaning-making across nature/culture bifurcations. Here, quite distinct branches of research intersect with the American scientist-philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce’s (1839 - 1914) pragmatic semiotics. I argue in these essays that the research pathway suggested by the convergence of edu- and bio-semiotics, reveals possibilities for developing a (non-reductive) theory of learning (and pedagogy generally) that puts meaning-making processes in a central light. A fully semiotic theory of learning implores us to take an ecological and biological view of educational processes. These processes explore the complementarity of organism-environment relations and the relationship between learning and biological adaptation. They also unravel new implications for education through the basic recognition that meaning is implicitly ecological. Understanding semiotic philosophy as an educational foundation allows us to take a broader and less dichotomized view of educational dynamics, such as: learning and teaching, curriculum design, arts and music education, inter/trans-disciplinary education, literacy (including environmental and digital literacy), as well as exploring the relationships and continuities between indigenous/place-based and formal pedagogical processes and practices. From this meaning-based and ecological perspective, what is important in the educational encounter is not psychologic explanations of learning stages, predetermined competencies, or top-down implemented learning-outcomes, but rather meaning and significance and how this changes through time-space and with others (not only human others) in a dynamic and changing environment. As addressed more directly in the conclusion chapter, these essays unravel the implications of this emerging approach to the philosophy of education, pedagogy and learning theory, specifically by providing conceptual/philosophical possibilities for integrating arts education, science education, and indigenous place-based knowledge into holistic educational approaches and programs

American color science, 1831-1931

Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 365-389).Although vision was seldom studied in Antebellum America, color and color perception became a critical field of scientific inquiry in the United States during the Gilded Age and progressive era. Through a historical investigation of color science in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I argue that attempts to scientifically measure, define, and regulate color were part of a wider program to construct a more rational, harmonious, and efficient American polity starting from one of the very baseline perceptual components of reality - the experience of color. As part of this program, I argue secondly that color science was as much a matter of prescription as description - that is, color scientists didn't simply endeavor to reveal the facts of perception and apply them to social problems, they wanted to train everyday citizens to see scientifically, and thereby create citizens whose eyes, bodies, and minds were both medically healthy and morally tuned to the needs of the modern American nation. Finally, I argue not simply that perception has a history - i.e. that perceptual practices change over time, and that, for Americans of a century ago, experiences of color sensations were not taken as given but had to be laboriously crafted - but also that this history weighs heavily upon our present day understanding of visual reality, as manifested not least of all in scientific studies of vision, language, and cognition. Employing a close reading of the archival and published sources of a range of actors including physicist Ogden Rood, semiotician Charles Peirce, logician Christine Ladd-Franklin, board game magnate Milton Bradley, and art professor Alfred Munsell, among others, this study reveals the origins of some of the most deeply-rooted conceptions of color in modern American culture.by Michael Paul Rossi.Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HAST

From sweetwater to seawater: An environmental history of Narragansett Bay, 1636--1849

This dissertation examines environmental change on and around Narragansett Bay from first European settlement in 1636 to the dissolution of the Blackstone Canal Company in 1849. It uses one of the largest estuaries on the East Coast and one situated at the heart of early English settlement in New England as a means to write estuaries into Atlantic history. Examining the ecological and epistemological complexities that arose at the nexus of land and sea, where improvable space and the push of progress met an eternal or profound ocean, this study reframes estuaries as watery borderlands that people used but never fully subdued. In this sense, this work challenges an older historiographical tradition of progress, while it advances environmental historiography by examining not terrestrial or oceanic environments but the soggy spaces in between. A closer look at the boundary between land and sea, this study shows, provides new insights into the ways Early Modern people envisioned the boundary between humans and nature. By rewriting the history of an estuary from the ground up, so to speak, this work explores the ways people shaped a watery world and how it shaped them in return. It argues that at the confluence of sweetwater and seawater, in the mixing, muddy margins of an estuary, there developed a whole host of political, legal, and cultural ambiguities that shaped patterns of settlement, trade, resource use, and ultimately the Bay itself But much more than the passive recipient of human action, the Bay became a cultural manifestation of the people who lived along its shores, and in consequence it was shaped and reshaped to meet the changing demands of human desire

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, showing the operations, expenditures, and condition of the Institution to July, 1885

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. 17 July. HMD 15 (pts. 1 and 2) , 49-1. v25-26, 2235p. [2431-2432] Research related to the American India

The Social Self: Hawthorne, Howells, William James, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology

American literary history of the nineteenth-century as a conflict between individualistic writers and a conformist society. In The Social Self, Joseph Alkana argues that such a dichotomy misrepresents the views of many authors. Sudden changes caused by the industrial revolution, urban development, increased immigration, and regional conflicts were threatening to fragment the community, and such writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne, William James, and William Dean Howells were deeply concerned about social cohesion. Alkana persuasively reintroduces Common Sense philosophy and Jamesian psychology as ways to understand how the nineteenth-century self/society dilemma developed. All three writers believed that introspection was the proper path to the discovery of truth. They also felt, Alkana argues, that such discoveries had to be validated by society. In these sophisticated readings of Hawthorne\u27s short stories and The Scarlet Letter, Howells\u27s utopian Altrurian romances, and James\u27s The Principles of Psychology, it becomes obvious that characters who isolate themselves from the community do so at considerable psychological risk. The Social Self links these writers\u27 interest in contemporary psychology to their concern for history and society. Alkana\u27s argument that nineteenth-century expressions of individualism were defensive responses to the fear of social chaos radically revises the traditional narrative of American literary culture. Joseph Alkana is associate professor of English at the University of Miami. Through intensely close readings of texts, Alkana traces the alternate concept of \u27the social self.\u27 In this time of militant groups resistant to conceptions of the self as interdependent from society, the issue is significant. —Choice Dense with fascinating and innovative variations on familiar themes and works. It is well worth the read. —JASAT Alkana freshly examines connections between selfhood and society as he negotiates a conceptual passageway between humanist definitions of selfhood . . . and poststructuralist claims of a \u27new liberation\u27 from the \u27tyranny of the philosophical subject. —South Atlantic Review Alkana offers a provocative, alternative reading of the individualist movement in nineteenth-century literary and intellectual circles. —Year’s Work in English Studies Alkana\u27s project does identify and explore the ongoing challenge of reconciling our critical and pedagogical methodologies and reminds us that the \u27self,\u27 in one form or another, remains central to this enterprise. —American Literaturehttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_north_america/1041/thumbnail.jp