Poverty as a political problem in late eighteenth-century Britain : Smith, Burke, Malthus

In eighteenth-century Britain, there was more than one way of thinking about poverty. For some, poverty was an essentially moral problem. Another way of conceiving of poverty was in economic terms. In this article, however, I want to consider some eighteenth-century versions of the idea that poverty might be a political issue. What I have in mind is the idea that a society containing a large proportion of very poor people might be, just for that reason, an unstable and disordered society. I argue, first, that this idea is central to Smith's treatment of poverty in The Wealth of Nations. Then, after a brief account of how Paine and Godwin imagined the end of poverty, I describe the further development and refinement of Smithian lines of thought in Burke and Malthus. My conclusion is that Smith, Burke, and Malthus constitute evidence that present-day ideas of social justice derive more from the nineteenth century and subsequent developments in moral and political thought than from the early modern period.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Some people and the people

PostprintNon peer reviewe

Phillipson's Hume in Phillipson's Scottish Enlightenment

The subject of this paper is the place of Hume in Nicholas Phillipson's account of the Scottish Enlightenment. I begin with Phillipson's reading of Hume as ‘civic moralist’. I then turn to his account of Hume the author of The History of England. And from there I proceed to the place of Hume in his intellectual biography of Adam Smith. I conclude with a brief description of Phillipson's understanding of Hume's place in the history of the Scottish Enlightenment as it mutated in the late eighteenth century and came to an end in the early nineteenth. I show how just as Phillipson's Hume cannot be understood apart from the Scottish Enlightenment, so also Phillipson's Scottish Enlightenment cannot be understood without HumePublisher PDFPeer reviewe

How to write a history of philosophy? The case of eighteenth-century Britain

This paper raises the question of how a history of the philosophy of eighteenth-century Britain should be written. First, it describes the usual answer to this question, which divides the period into what happened before Hume, then Hume, then responses to Hume. It notes that this answer does not correspond well with how the period saw itself. It then considers how ‘philosophy’ is defined in Britain in the eighteenth century, taking into account dictionary definitions, book titles, and university syllabi. Obvious differences between eighteenth-century and twenty-first-century philosophy are explored, including the idea that ‘natural philosophy’ is as much part of philosophy as moral philosophy, metaphysics, and logic, and the difficulty of making a distinction between philosophy and what we now call psychology. In the final section of the paper some difficulties are raised regarding the hypothesis that ‘enlightenment’ might provide an organizing concept for a more historically sensitive account of eighteenth-century British philosophy.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The Ages of the Thin Disk, Thick Disk, and the Halo from Nearby White Dwarfs

We present a detailed analysis of the white dwarf luminosity functions derived from the local 40 pc sample and the deep proper motion catalog of Munn et al (2014, 2017). Many of the previous studies ignored the contribution of thick disk white dwarfs to the Galactic disk luminosity function, which results in an erronous age measurement. We demonstrate that the ratio of thick/thin disk white dwarfs is roughly 20\% in the local sample. Simultaneously fitting for both disk components, we derive ages of 6.8-7.0 Gyr for the thin disk and 8.7 $\pm$ 0.1 Gyr for the thick disk from the local 40 pc sample. Similarly, we derive ages of 7.4-8.2 Gyr for the thin disk and 9.5-9.9 Gyr for the thick disk from the deep proper motion catalog, which shows no evidence of a deviation from a constant star formation rate in the past 2.5 Gyr. We constrain the time difference between the onset of star formation in the thin disk and the thick disk to be $1.6^{+0.3}_{-0.4}$ Gyr. The faint end of the luminosity function for the halo white dwarfs is less constrained, resulting in an age estimate of $12.5^{+1.4}_{-3.4}$ Gyr for the Galactic inner halo. This is the first time ages for all three major components of the Galaxy are obtained from a sample of field white dwarfs that is large enough to contain significant numbers of disk and halo objects. The resultant ages agree reasonably well with the age estimates for the oldest open and globular clusters.Comment: ApJ, in pres

Arthopyrenia betulicola (Arthopyreniaceae, Dothidiomycetes), an Unusual New Lichenized Fungus From High Elevations of the Southern Appalachian Mountains

The crustose pyrenolichen Arthopyrenia betulicola is described as new to science based on collections from high elevations of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in eastern North America. The species is hypothesized to be endemic to the southern Appalachian Mountains where it occurs only on the bark of mature yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis). It is a somewhat unusual member of the genus Arthopyrenia s.l. in consistently having a conspicuous photobiont layer of Trentepohlia. It differs from A. cinchonae, with which it is allopatric, by this feature as well as in having differently shaped and narrower ascospores

Changes in Wetland Vegetation in Regulated Lakes in Northern Minnesota, USA Ten Years after a New Regulation Plan Was Implemented

Lake-level regulation alters wetland plant communities and their role in providing faunal habitat. Regulation plans have sometimes been changed to restore ecosystem function; however, few studies have shown the effects of such changes. In 2000, a new plan was implemented for regulation of Rainy Lake and Namakan Reservoir in northern Minnesota, USA. We had studied wetland plant communities under the previous 1970 regulation plan in 1987 and used those data to evaluate changes during 2002–2006 and 2010 resampling efforts using the same methods. Ordinations showed that plant communities changed little on Rainy Lake, where regulation changes were minor. However, on Namakan Reservoir, substantial changes had occurred in both vegetation and faunal habitat within two years, as plants favored by dewatering were replaced by submersed aquatic plants favored by year-round flooding under the new 2000 regulation plan. After ten years, Namakan showed greater similarity to unregulated Lac La Croix but still differed overall. Longer-term studies may be needed to determine if the regulation-plan change continues to alter Namakan plant communities. The speed at which changes began suggests that studies on other regulated lakes should begin in the first growing season following implementation of a new regulation plan and should continue periodically for a decade or longer

DNA Evidence of a Croatian and Sephardic Jewish Settlement on the North Carolina Coast Dating from the Mid to Late 1500s

While the British origins of North American colonization currently are widely accepted, there is new evidence that other countries and non-Christians may have been earlier in establishing permanent settlements on the North Atlantic coast. Using the new research tool of human genomics, this paper provides DNA evidence that Croatians and Sephardic Jews were absorbed into the ancestral population of the Lumbee Native American tribe of North Carolina during the mid- to late-1500s. We further propose that these Sephardic Jews originated, in part, from a subgroup of the Roanoke colonists of 1586. Given this, a new historical narrative of early European colonization in North America during the 1500s is proposed

The impact of fire on habitat use by the short-snouted elephant shrew ('Elephantulus brachyrhynchus') in North West Province, South Africa

Several studies have investigated the response of small mammal populations to fire, but few have investigated behavioural responses to habitat modification. In this study we investigated the impact of fire on home range, habitat use and activity patterns of the short-snouted elephant shrew (Elephantulus brachyrhynchus) by radio-tracking individuals before and after a fire event. All animals survived the passage of fire in termite mound refugia. Before the fire, grassland was used more than thickets, but habitat utilization shifted to thickets after fire had removed the grass cover. Thickets were an important refuge both pre- and post-fire, but the proportion of thicket within the home range was greater post-fire. We conclude that fire-induced habitat modification resulted in a restriction of E. brachyrhynchus movements to patches of unburned vegetation. This may be a behavioural response to an increase in predation pressure associated with a reduction in cover, rather than a lack of food. This study highlights the importance of considering the landscape mosaic in fire management and allowing sufficient island patches to remain post-fire ensures the persistence of the small mammal fauna