Defining and Defending the Humanities (original) (raw)

Religion, the Royal Society, and the Rise of Science

Theology and Science, 2008

Accounts of the role of religion in the rise of modern science often focus on the way in which religion provided the intellectual foundations for scientific enquiry, motivated particular individuals, or provided the substantive content of approaches to nature. These accounts relate to the origins of science and assume that, once established, modern science becomes self-justifying. However, seventeenth-century criticisms of science— attacks on the Royal Society being one example—suggest that science remained a marginal and precarious activity for some time. The rise of science to cultural prominence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was possible only because science was eventually able to establish itself as religiously useful enterprise. Religion thus played a key role not only in the origins of modern science, but in providing the ongoing social sanctions that ensured its persistence and rise to prominence.

Voices Calling for Reform: The Royal Society in the Mid-Eighteenth Century -- Martin Folkes, John Hill, and William Stukeley

History of Science, 1999

The precise intellectual status of the Royal Society of London in the mid-eighteenth century continues to be a vexed matter in further need of archival retrieval and historical exploration. Previously, historians have tended to identify a general state of decline in the Society in the decades following the death in 1727 of its most prestigious president, Sir Isaac Newton. There have, however, been two important recent calls for reappraisal by David Miller (1989) and Richard Sorrenson (1996), aptly and deservingly calling this picture into question.' Miller rightly observes that "The Society's eighteenth-century existence has attracted little attention among modem scholars't.? a fact which in itself portrays, and possibly even contributes to, a picture of decline. Sorrenson's admirable revisionary essay has argued that the status of the Society at mid-century must be wholly reassessed and has labelled the idea of a condition or state of decline a "misperception". Sorrenson suggests furthermore that "the Society experienced a period of significant productivity and growth throughout the eighteenth century", devoting itself to "a vibrant instrumental empiricism in general and to the important imperial science of mixed mathematics in particular".' He also highlights the pecuniary importance of non-active Fellows to the Society, claiming that "bereft of any regular state support, [it] could not have carried out its main functions-validating experimental results, facilitating communication and publication, organizing expeditions, and acknowledging exemplary achievement-without the subscription of all its Fellows".' In this paper we aim to continue the important work of these scholars by examining a previously overlooked figure in the history of the Royal Society at mid-century: its president, the natural philosopher and antiquarian Martin Folkes (1690-1754), and to reexamine the infamous attack upon his presidency by John Hill. Folkes's presidency ran from 1741 to 1752, with Hill being the Society's greatest and most persistent eighteenthcentury critic. Hill has, of course, been written upon at some length, but we shall not confine our material on Folkes's presidency to Hill. We shall also bring in here new "voices" raised against Folkes. These include that well-known diarist of the Society'S meetings, Dr William Stukeley, and certain opponents of Folkes's

The Making of the Humanities : Volume II - From Early Modern to Modern Disciplines

2012

List of Figures 419 Index 421 manism to historicism, Bos focuses on two humanist historians (Machiavelli and Guicciardini) and two nineteenth-century historians (Ranke and Droysen). His starting point is Machiavelli's and Guicciardini's painful experience that the old world of Italian city-states was lost. A similar dissociation of the past occurred Break or continuity in the humanities? Various papers in this volume suggest that the notion of a revolution in the humanities around 1800 is more problematic than has been previously assumed. While the nineteenth century brought discipline formation and specialized methodologies, several concepts and ideas were in existence already well before 1800 and were consolidated among scholars, for instance in philology, linguistics, musicology and historiography (Leerssen, Semi, Van Hal). New in the nineteenth century was especially the academic institutionalization of disciplines (Elffers, Paul, Jørgensen), not so much the nature of humanistic knowledge as a whole. Universities guaranteed stability and continuity, but these also existed among Notes  The first conference in this series was 'The Making of the Humanities: First International Conference on the History of the Humanities', which took place from - October  at the University of Amsterdam. The second conference was 'The Making of the Humanities II: Second International Conference on the History of the Humanities' , which took place from - October  also at the

Shifting Demarcations: An Introduction, Forum: The Two Cultures Revisited: The Sciences and the Humanities in a Longue Durée Perspective, History of Humanities 3/1 (2018): 5-14.

This introduction situates the forum in the recent scholarship on the “two cultures.” It argues that for a long time two concepts exerted a powerful influence over our thinking about the intertwined histories of the sciences and the humanities: “the Scientific Revolution,” by offering a historical beginning for their separation, and C. P. Snow’s “two cultures” thesis, by offering an end point for this development. Of late both of them have lost in persuasiveness. Recent research offers a more balanced view of the innovations of seventeenth-century naturalists, puts more weight on developments that took place during the long nineteenth century, and highlights the limits of the division. Instead of presupposing a single, unified divide, different attempts to demarcate both the sciences and the humanities have to be studied with an eye on the specifics of their intellectual, disciplinary, and wider cultural contexts. This forum maps the problem in this vein, offers different interpretations, and widens the scope of our discussion in both geographical and chronological terms. to demarcate both the sciences and the humanities have to be studied with an eye on the specifics of their intellectual, disciplinary, and wider cultural contexts. This forum maps the problem in this vein, offers different interpretations, and widens the scope of our discussion in both geographical and chronological terms. the innovations of seventeenth-century naturalists, puts more weight on developments that took place during the long nineteenth century, and highlights the limits of the division. Instead of presupposing a single, unified divide, different attempts to demarcate both the sciences and the humanities have to be studied with an eye on the specifics of their intellectual, disciplinary, and wider cultural contexts. This forum maps the problem in this vein, offers different interpretations, and widens the scope of our discussion in both geographical and chronological terms. Few