612 research outputs found

    The collecting activities of Sir John Lubbock (1834-1913).

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    In 2 vols.Available from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN042838 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

    Primates in Print: Popularizing Interspecies Kinship in Huxley's 'Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature'

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    This paper examines the bibliographic features of Thomas H. Huxley’s 1863 work Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature in order to focalize Huxley’s public engagement with non-professional audiences and consumerist market forces. Huxley’s shaping of Victorian scientific practices and his cultural contributions to natural history have been thoroughly documented, yet the hermeneutic potential of the popular work’s bibliographic and visual elements has not been adequately addressed. When amalgamated through a re-conceived process of reading, the textual and visual features of Evidence materialize the evidence of evolutionary processes to which humans themselves are subject to. After confronting humans and primates in print, Huxley’s audience understood that the socio-cultural barriers to the dismantling of animal/human dichotomies imposed by humanist ideology were made available to rational critique. Because of its wide-ranging success as a catalyst of public—not just professional—acknowledgment of evolution, I contend that Evidence’s physical and visual features should not be overlooked as major contributing factors in the dissemination and acceptance of natural explanation. This research engages with pressing questions concerning the interclass popularization of Victorian science: how did tactile decisions about the object fashion its own reception? Can evolution be presented via visual rather than purely conceptual means? How immersed was Huxley’s product in burgeoning capitalistic forces? Ultimately, understanding Evidence’s status as a marketable visual product sheds light on how Victorians (professional and colloquial subjects alike) propagated, absorbed, and contemplated the ramifications of evolution.

    "Greedy For Facts": Charles Darwin's Information Needs and Behaviors

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    Aptly describing himself as "greedy for facts" and exercising "industry in observing and collecting facts", Charles Darwin passionately sought and assiduously organized, managed, communicated, and used information throughout his life. From a 21st-century information age perspective, Darwin can be seen as a pre-Melvil Dewey, multidisciplinary, Victorian era proto-information manager, whose skillfully-employed information behaviors were fundamental to realizing his seminal Origin of Species (1859) and in influencing his life-long scientific development. A large body of research about Darwin exists but little has been written in the library and information science (LIS) field regarding Darwin and his pivotal relationship with information. Human information behavior (HIB) is an emerging LIS subfield, which has principally studied the information needs and information seeking behaviors of modern era human beings. Cambridge University is the foremost provider of print and electronic access to more than 14,000 transcribed and edited extant letters written by and to Darwin. Using historical case study methodology, this dissertation applies an HIB-oriented approach to investigate and inventory Darwin's information needs and behaviors through analysis of his surviving correspondence and other primary and secondary Darwin-related scholarly sources. A general framework is developed, designating five interrelated, broad context information behavior (BCIB) classification categories for conceptualizing Darwin's information behavior roles: as information seeker, organizer, manager, communicator, and user. In the vein of Ellis et al.'s (1993) study designating eight information seeking behaviors exhibited by contemporary British scientists, this dissertation utilizes grounded theory to derive and explain more than fifty descriptive information behaviors (DIBs) exhibited by Darwin. DIBs are conceptual constructs which are used to specify and describe, via words and examples from Darwin's correspondence and writings, the relevant characteristics and nuances of his diverse information behaviors. A case study examines and explicates the crucial ways in which Darwin's information behaviors proved instrumental in preserving priority for his evolutionary ideas during a crisis period involving rival evolutionary theorist Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858. An information-related timeline of Darwin's life, graphic models, and digital photographs illustrating his information behaviors are presented. Limitations of the study and areas for further research are also discussed

    Rhetoric and Romanticism in Charles Darwin\u27s \u3cem\u3eOrigin of Species\u3c/em\u3e

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    Charles Darwin\u27s fame and success as a scientist were undoubtedly based on the reception of the evolutionary paradigm he articulated in Origin of Species. Although many of Darwin\u27s ideas were only ideas at the time of Origin\u27s publication, they indubitably fostered the widespread acceptance of the evolutionary worldview among scientists and non-scientists. And this phenomenon took place in a relatively short period of time. The fact that much of Darwin\u27s evolutionary thesis was well received and yet was clearly, and by his own admission, hypothetical, may seem to be a curious development. This thesis project will center on two factors that contributed to Origin\u27s success: Darwin\u27s persuasive and argumentative skills and his appropriation of romantic literary devices. Along with Darwin\u27s rhetoric, I will examine his use of conventional romanticist poetic discourse and typology within an overarching systematic mythology. In short, I will demonstrate that Darwin\u27s success as a scientist was contingent upon his rhetorical skills and, to some degree, his cultivation of romantic themes, prose, and myth. In order to better understand the author and his audience, I will introduce my argument by exploring some background information on Darwin and the currents of thought in the Victorian Era. I will also analyze Darwin\u27s copiously documented correspondence, reflect upon his pre-Origin notes, and highlight other biographical material. Subsequently, I will demonstrate that 1) Darwin was deeply committed to his view but was unable to demonstrate it in a limited time frame or substantiate it with empirical evidence, 2) Darwin\u27s presentation in Origin was self-consciously and strategically designed to subvert the creationist paradigm that already was under attack during his era, and 3) It was necessary for Darwin to resort to various and sundry rhetorical and literary strategies in order for this presentation to be effective. As a result, I will present my view of Origin as much more an exercise in rhetoric, literary innovation, and mythology than the verifiable and objective categorization of scientific facts. As Darwin himself called Origin one long argument, I will examine, in depth, his rhetorical strategies especially in relation to classical rhetoric. Aristotle\u27s Rhetoric along with the poignant research of rhetorician John Campbell will be instrumental towards these ends. Along with Darwin\u27s mastery of rhetoric, his early reading and writings will confirm his affinity with Romanticism. I will consequently document the relationship between the nature-worship and language of the Romantics and the naturalism and poetic discourse that is foundational in much of Origin. I will make such connections in part by discussing Darwin\u27s ideas and writing style in terms of the poetry of men like Wordsworth and Tennyson. I will also identify Darwin\u27s use of Romanticism as a clever literary strategy designed to appeal to Romanticist-influenced Victorians. Finally, I will examine Darwin\u27s ability to create a counter-mythology to creationism

    Significant Walks

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    This paper will describe the trajectory of research between Thinking Path and Significant Walks and how the latter explores the reality of walking for individuals with chronic low back pain. Funded by the Wellcome Trust, Significant Walks pools the expertise of a research team that share a mutual interest in the resonance of walking as an interpretive tool and who came together following Shirley Chubb’s exhibition Thinking Path, which took Charles Darwin’s daily ritual of walking the same path in the grounds of his family home as its inspiration. The collaborative research team are working with a group of participants who are invited to identify a personal walk that encapsulates memory, reminiscence and familiarity as well as being a measure of their physical experience. Manifested as an immersive digital artwork, a methodology has been identified that synthesizes eye level video documentation of participant’s personal walks with simultaneously gathered streams of kinematic data recording the movement of the spine. Researchers and participants work together to explore how the interpretive qualities of visual effects can be applied to each body of synthesized footage in order to express the nature and resonance of personal movement whilst walking. Each micro journey expresses individual experience through the interpretation of clinically accurate data and acts as a vehicle for precise accounts of physical movement whilst also presenting the reflective individual at the core of scientific understanding

    Science, Empire, and Polymathy in Victorian Society: George Douglas Campbell, The 8th Duke of Argyll

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    This thesis investigates the scientific activities of the 8th Duke of Argyll, George Douglas Campbell (1823-1900), who was an important Victorian scientific aristocrat. Today the British aristocracy are predominantly perceived as a passive group whose contributions to society - predominantly stemming from the House of Lords - are at best minimal. The Victorian scientific aristocrats, in contrast, were known to be anything but passive. My thesis intends to provide a historical case study illuminating the life of one of these scientific aristocrats. Not only was Argyll a knowledge maker in his own right, I argue, but he also acted as a key facilitator, or broker, in knowledge networks dedicated to scientific and industrial advance across Britain and its growing empire. Argyll is primarily known as an amateur gentleman of science, particularly vocal in his advocacy of theistic evolution. Yet due to this narrow conception most historians of science have largely overlooked other central aspects of his undertakings which ranged from ornithology, aeronautics, and geography, to anthropology, philosophical theology, and education. Thus, in providing a fuller picture of his engagements this case study will - for the first time - push Argyll’s image beyond simply being seen as a critical contemporary of Darwin. My thesis makes four arguments. Firstly, prior to the twentieth century, scientific authority was a product of birth, status, wealth and ability. Over time, birth, status, (and to some degree, wealth), became less important. Ability became the primary means of securing scientific standing. As a result, the concept of the ‘scientific aristocrat’ slowly faded away. Secondly, Victorian aristocrats - theistic in their religious outlook – contributed to, and often created, the very conditions leading to the professionalisation of science and technology. Most crucially, their wealth enabled them to continue a pre-Victorian amateur tradition - known as “country house science” – whilst actively advocating for the institutionalisation of science and technology. Thirdly, in addition to the domestic space, government appointments provided key routes through which aristocrats such as Argyll could promote and legislate both science and technical education in Britain and throughout its empire. Thus, the complex and constantly shifting dynamics at play between the state and state actors, in the context of nationalism and imperialism, is an important theme in the history of late-Victorian science to which aristocrats form part of the picture. And fourthly, Argyll’s polymathic involvement in areas as diverse as science, industry, theology, philosophy and education strongly imply that we should resist applying an overtly homogenous understanding regarding the engagements of the aristocracy. An analytical approach enables us to see the Victorian scientific aristocrats primarily as individuals interested in science and technology who happened to be connected through hereditary status

    The Descent of Darwin—A Theological Understanding of Charles Darwin

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    In the process of seeking to understand Charles Darwin and his ideas that have come to dominate much of the modern/postmodern, western worldview, it is essential to elucidate the historical context in which both are developed is essential to elucidate. This approach asserts a reciprocity between Darwin the man (son, explorer, naturalist, husband, father, controversialist)and his ideas that not only derive from his life experiences but also contribute to them. An obvious place to start in this regard is the relationship he has with his mother. Although seemingly Freudian in tone, the purpose for this analysis does not include a psychoanalytical critique of their relationship. Rather, to show that Susannah Darwin\u27s religious beliefs imprint Darwin’s thoughts about God and religion for the rest of his life is the goal. Indeed, the turmoil that involves both God and religion during the latter part of his life exposes the nebulous faith foundation for which his mother is most influential when he is a young lad. A more intimate portrait of the relationship between Susannah and Charles Darwin, especially in its religious dimensions, proves most helpful in placing his worldview in historical context
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