Civilization In England Research Articles

The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction, Science, and Gender, by Michael Tondre

Reviewed by: The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction, Science, and Gender by Michael Tondre Christie Harner (bio) The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction, Science, and Gender, by Michael Tondre; pp. ix + 230. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018, $45.00. What would it mean, Michael Tondre asks, to read nineteenth-century literary realism not for its poised assertions of teleological plot but, rather, for the narrative structures that are “couched in the conditional or subjunctive mood” (4)? Tondre’s book The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction, Science, and Gender focuses our attention on a mid-Victorian [End Page 678] generation of intellectuals, both novelists and scientists, who peered through the looking glass, defied the insistence on causality, and introduced alternative trajectories, potential outcomes, and enticing indeterminacies. Moving adroitly across the fields and discourses of thermodynamics, physio-psychology, evolutionary science, statistics, and literary form, Tondre argues persuasively for fluid “network relations” between disciplines rather than directional structures of influence (12). As he suggests, what emerges from a capacious reading of these seemingly divergent spheres is a developing articulation of what was variably termed chance, probability, or frequency. In taking up the discursive work of these terms, The Physics of Possibility joins a cadre of scholarly studies that explores the nineteenth-century fascination with what cannot readily be seen: currents of light and energy, minute or distant material bodies, theories of relativity, and mathematical relationships. Scholars such as Sarah Alexander, Barri J. Gold, Anna Henchman, Andrea Henderson, Christopher Herbert, and Alice Jenkins have argued powerfully for a renewed interest in Victorian studies in speculative mathematics and energy physics. While Tondre is right to point to an “enabling absence in scholarship” that sidesteps Victorian specificities in favor of an epistemic leap from the Enlightenment to Albert Einstein, and to urge further scholarship in the field, he does not always acknowledge overtly enough the already lively dialogues within the interdisciplinary field of Victorian studies (172). The “enabling absence” that he identifies exists less in the work of his immediate scholarly colleagues and more in that of so-called new materialist philosophers whose claims have developed outside of period boundaries. What makes Tondre’s work unique in this burgeoning field, and so pleasurably exciting to read, however, is his deft capacity to traverse an enormous body of scientific, social scientific, and cultural material. The four chapters each focus on a different type of “probabilistic calculus” or an alternative model of chance and variability—but also, in doing so, move across webs of texts and thinkers that have rarely been brought together (13). The first chapter links the mathematics of chance to the astronomer’s error curve, Augustus De Morgan’s work on probability, and Henry Thomas Buckle’s History of Civilization in England (1857–61), among other texts, before contemplating elliptical structure and occluded possibilities in George Meredith’s The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859). In its analysis of sensation, writ large, chapter 2 interweaves equations based in the delayed reaction times of astronomers with a series of physio-psychological writings on sense stimuli and duration by Alexander Bain and Henry Maudsley, among others. The move to Wilkie Collins’s Armadale (1864–66) then asks readers to perceive fiction as weighing in on competing definitions of postponement, those drawn from probability and physio-psychology but also from Walter Pater, nineteenth-century “temporal regimentation,” and theorizations of literary sensation (82). While some readers may find the networking of widely disparate sources confusing, perhaps especially in the second chapter’s discussion of multitemporal logics, Tondre’s capacity to synthesize a wealth of material is impressive and inspiring—an exemplar for interdisciplinary thinking and for what he identifies as the patterns of “formal and conceptual connection” among fields (169). The second half of the book underscores Tondre’s expansive knowledge of his subject as it shifts from mathematical models of probability, broadly defined, to what he calls the “dominant Victorian sciences of evolutionism and thermodynamics” (14). Chapter 3 gives a lengthy account of the challenge that nonreproduction posed to [End Page 679] evolutionary theory, alongside an apt reminder of Charles Darwin’s work on chance variation, before turning to an analysis of the two altruistic, but non-reproductive...

Henry Thomas Buckle's The History of Civilization in England in France (1865–1918): A Transnational Reception Case

ABSTRACT The article examines how Henry Thomas Buckle's History of Civilization in England was translated and understood in France from 1865 to 1918. Buckle was translated at a time when English historiography had lost its prominence in France. His positivism, and the influence that French thinkers such as Guizot, Michelet, and Comte had on his work, explain why Buckle was acclaimed during that period. He was published in a collection that made him appear as one of the leading international historians of his time. The article points out how French and British politics interfered with the publication of Buckle's History under the Second Empire and how finally Buckle was eclipsed by Marx. Through Buckle, the article gives a new outline of the reception of English historiography in France during the latter part of the nineteenth century.

History's (Un)Reason: Victorian Intellectualism from J. S. Mill to Leslie Stephen

intellectual history remains one of the least studied of the various forms of historiography practiced by the Victorians, certainly when compared to political, constitutional, or literary history, or to the historical novel when considered as a historiographical genre. Yet intellectual-historical inquiry formed a vital strand in the Victorian discourse on the past, particularly in liberal quarters, where a belief in ideas as the engines of change reinforced the prevailing doctrine of progress in history as shaped by human agency, volition, and “char acter.” s ome of the more popular intellectual histories were epic in intention and scale: Henry Thomas Buckle’s History of Civilization in England (1857–61), John William Draper’s History of the Intellectual Devel opment of Europe (1863), and W. E. H. Lecky’s History of the Rise and Influ ence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (1865) presented the march of mind in terms of a steady, incremental victory of reason over supersti tion and of heroic human effort over the unruly forces of nature. i n a more scholarly (and more self-searching) key, historians like Mark pattison, John Morley, and Leslie s tephen saw intellectual history as a cornerstone of the historiography of civilization or—in the fashion able parlance of mid-Victorian sociology—of the study of the laws of social change. For them, publishing their major works of intellectual

The First Orthopaedic Researcher

Callaghan, John J. MD; Moderator1; Crowninshield, Roy D. PhD2; Greenwald, A. Seth DPhil(Oxon)3; Lieberman, Jay R. MD4; Rosenberg, Aaron G. MD5; Lewallen, David G. MD6 Author Information

Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex, and Civility in England, 1660–1740 by David M. Turner

Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex, and Civility in England, 1660–1740 by David M. Turner

:Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex, and Civility in England, 1660-1740

Acknowledgements Note on the text List of abbreviations Introduction 1. Language, sex and civility 2. Marital advice and moral prescription 3. Cultures of cuckoldry 4. Sex, death and betrayal: adultery and murder 5. Sex, proof and suspicion: adultery in the church courts 6. Criminal conversation Conclusion Bibliography Index.

Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660-1740, by David M. Turner

<i>Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660-1740</i>, by David M. Turner

&lt;sc&gt;David M. Turner&lt;/sc&gt;. &lt;italic&gt;Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660–1740&lt;/italic&gt;. (Past and Present Publications.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 236. $55.00

David M. Turner. Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660–1740. (Past and Present Publications.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 236. $55.00 Turner David M.. Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660–1740. (Past and Present Publications.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 236. $55.00. Elizabeth Foyster Elizabeth Foyster Clare College, University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 108, Issue 5, December 2003, Pages 1522–1523, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/108.5.1522 Published: 01 December 2003

Reviews of Books:Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660-1740 David M. Turner

Reviews of Books:Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660-1740 David M. Turner

Max Weber's Methodology in Its Place*

When Henry Thomas Buckle, in the opening pages of his History of Civilization in England, declared "that for all the higher purposes of human thought history is still miserably deficient, and presents that confused and anarchical appearance natural to a subject of which the laws are unknown, and even the foundation unsettled" (vol. I, p. 4), he did no less than call into question the scientific legitimacy of historiography as predominantly practiced. Connecting the discipline's insufficiency to its failure "to rise from particular facts in order to discover the laws by which those facts are governed," his diagnosis concerning the source of the shortcoming was straightforward: The root of the problem appeared to him to be "a strange idea" prevailing among historians, "that their business is merely to relate events" (op. cit., p. 3), occasionally enlivening their presentations with moral and political reflections as they saw fit. It was German historians who felt particularly stung by this dismissal, and the development of the theory of historiography in Germany in the generation of Max Weber's im mediate predecessors received its main impetus from the desire to articu late a cogent defense against claims such as Buckle's. To obtain a proper idea of this theory's overriding concern, therefore, it is crucial to make no mistake about the central thrust of the argument it attempted to rebut. Fortunately Buckle is quite unambiguous. Espousing the programmatic po sition that the totality of actions which constitute the history of mankind "form one vast scheme of universal order" (op. cit., p. 24) articulable in terms of the "fixed and universal laws" (op. cit., p. 5) determining the pro gress of civilization, he maintains that the aim of any science must be to grasp its subject matter "in the whole of its natural relations" (op. cit., p. 3).

Civilizing Punishment: The End of the Public Execution in England

On August 14, 1868, Thomas Wells was executed behind prison walls in Maidstone. According to the The Times, the event passed off so quietly that the public perhaps failed to note the significance of the occasion. With his death the drama of the public execution came to an end. “It is,” the newspaper explained, “emphatically one of those reforms which are hard to realize before they are made, but which, once made, seem so simple and unobjectionable that they are treated almost as a matter of course.” On the face of it, this passage seems to capture the salient features of the episode. In the decades leading up to abolition, opinion was deeply divided about the value of the death penalty and the wisdom of public executions. The Times itself, almost to the last moment, resisted the change. But once the issue was resolved in favor of privacy, no voice demanded their return. There were no demonstrations protesting the reform. Even the arguments once used to defend the publicity of punishment disappeared from view.But The Times meant something more by the phrase “one of those reforms.” It indicated a belief that the abolition belonged to a special category of measures, those that contributed to the progress of civilization in England. The idea that civilization demanded the end of the public execution figured prominently in reform arguments, and occupied just as important a place in later interpretations of the change. A liberal member of Parliament, John Hibbert, in pointing to an execution in 1866, explained that “no one anxious to promote civilization could wish to see the recurrence of a scene of that kind.”

Strindberg’s Historical Imagination: Erik XIV

At the end of the nineteenth century to study history still to believe that the historian's highest commitment to Truth, and that invariably the right historical method would disclose the formal coherence of man's life in time. To be sure, by the 1890's methods of attaining truth and discovering universal principles of order were anything but uniform. Positivists like Ranke, Comte, Marx, and Mill argued that history merely another branch of natural science and that the past should be studied from a sound basis of experimentally verifiable laws. For Idealists like Hegel, Croce, and Dilthey, on the other hand, history a human not a mathematical science, and thus the historian had to get inside the past, to write history in Leopold von Ranke's term it actually was by reliving or rethinking what happened and why. Still, no matter what differences in methodology or philosophy existed, nineteenth-century European historical thought represented an effort to constitute history as the ground for a 'realistic' science of man, society, and culture;! almost without exception men accepted that history proceeding in a more-or-less coherent direction toward some teleology, and that historical events could be made to yield their ultimate meaning. Strindberg's position at century's end made it possible for him to know all the important developments of nineteenth-century historiography. Indeed, he remarkably well read in history, an interest he maintained right up to his final years.2 Early in his life Henry Thomas Buckle's History of Civilization in England had made a profound impression upon Strindberg

The Social Relations of Science

WHEN eighty years ago, H. T. Buckle wrote his “History of Civilization in England”, his main thesis was that the course of human progress could be traced in the growth of scientific truth. He applied scientific principles to the study of history, but measured progress too much by materialistic achievements for his analysis of causes to be accepted by historians as complete. Mr. J. G. Crowther takes a truer and broader view of the social and intellectual influences of natural knowledge, and is not so much concerned with maintaining a proposition as in presenting a picture of creative scientific thought and action. He has long been esteemed as a clear interpreter of scientific developments to general readers, through his articles in the newspaper press and other literary works; and he realizes fully the relations between these advances and the structure of society. The Social Relations of Science By J. G. Crowther. Pp. xxxii + 665. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1941.) 16s. net.

History of Civilization in England

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article ARTICLENo AccessHistory of Civilization in EnglandHenry Thomas BuckleHenry Thomas BuckleSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Apr 2006https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.18.1.70AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail PDFThis content is only available as a PDF. Access content To read the fulltext, please use one of the options below to sign in or purchase access. Personal login Institutional Login Sign in via OpenAthens Purchase Save for later Item saved, go to cart PPV Articles - American Journal of Psychiatry $35.00 Add to cart PPV Articles - American Journal of Psychiatry Checkout Please login/register if you wish to pair your device and check access availability. Not a subscriber? Subscribe Now / Learn More PsychiatryOnline subscription options offer access to the DSM-5 library, books, journals, CME, and patient resources. This all-in-one virtual library provides psychiatrists and mental health professionals with key resources for diagnosis, treatment, research, and professional development. Need more help? PsychiatryOnline Customer Service may be reached by emailing [email protected] or by calling 800-368-5777 (in the U.S.) or 703-907-7322 (outside the U.S.). FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byCivilizzazione e funzione ancillare della forzaSOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO, Vol. 49, No. 2Bibliographie Volume 18Issue 1 July 1861Pages 70-80 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 April 2006 Published in print 1 July 1861

History of Civilization in England

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article ARTICLENo AccessHistory of Civilization in EnglandHenry Thomas BuckleHenry Thomas BuckleSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Apr 2006https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.15.2.233AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail PDFThis content is only available as a PDF. Access content To read the fulltext, please use one of the options below to sign in or purchase access. Personal login Institutional Login Sign in via OpenAthens Purchase Save for later Item saved, go to cart PPV Articles - American Journal of Psychiatry $35.00 Add to cart PPV Articles - American Journal of Psychiatry Checkout Please login/register if you wish to pair your device and check access availability. Not a subscriber? Subscribe Now / Learn More PsychiatryOnline subscription options offer access to the DSM-5 library, books, journals, CME, and patient resources. This all-in-one virtual library provides psychiatrists and mental health professionals with key resources for diagnosis, treatment, research, and professional development. Need more help? PsychiatryOnline Customer Service may be reached by emailing [email protected] or by calling 800-368-5777 (in the U.S.) or 703-907-7322 (outside the U.S.). FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited By, Vol. 21 Volume 15Issue 2 October 1858Pages 233-238 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 April 2006 Published in print 1 October 1858

History of Civilization in England

English historian Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–62) was born into the family of a wealthy London merchant. A child of delicate health, and tutored privately at home, he never attended university. Nevertheless, it was clear that he was meant for intellectual pursuits and by the age of twenty he was a formidable chess player. With his love of books and reading, he set out on an ambitious plan to write a fourteen-volume history of civilisation, and at the same time to put historical research on a more scientific basis. The work would have included a greater number of countries, but due to his early death, only two volumes exist. Published in 1861, this is the second of two volumes that make up Buckle's unfinished history of civilization. It focuses on Scotland, and its intellectual, religious, political and social history. It also includes a chapter on Spain.